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TRIPOLI: British warplanes bombed a bunker in Muammar Qadhafi's birthplace of Sirte as rebel fighters prepared Friday to attack the town, one of the last major regime holdouts east of Tripoli.
As insurgent leaders moved into Tripoli to begin a political transition, the African Union called for that process to be “inclusive.”
And the UN human rights chief warned against assassinating Qadhafi, whose whereabouts are unknown and who has a $1.7 million rebel price on his head.
On the ground, the rebels claimed a new military success Friday with the capture of Ras Jdir, a post on the border with Tunisia, which it was feared Qadhafi might use to escape Libya.
A Tunisian government official said Qadhafi loyalists fled as more than 100 rebels arrived at Ras Jdir and raised their flag.
A representative of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Tunisian television from Ras Jdir that four pro-Qadhafi fighters surrendered.
On the Sirte front, “a formation of Tornado GR4s... fired a salvo of Storm Shadow precision-guided missiles against a large headquarters bunker in Qadhafi's hometown” on Thursday night, Britain's defence ministry said.
Speculation that Qadhafi might have found refuge in the town, which lies 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of Tripoli, has not been confirmed.
Nato said on Friday its planes had hit 29 armed vehicles and a “command and control node” near Sirte as they advanced toward the rebel-held port of Misrata, about 140 kilometres away.
Regime forces in Sirte have been regularly targeted since the start of the campaign, an official said, but now “it's one of the last places he (Qadhafi) has control of.”
“It has always been a stronghold of the regime and now the remnants of the regime are using it to launch attacks,” the official said.
“This is an extremely desperate and dangerous remnant of a former regime and they are obviously desperately trying to disrupt the fact that the Libyan people have started to take responsibility for their own country.”
On Thursday, the NTC moved many of its top figures from their Benghazi base to the capital, just days after rebel fighters overran Tripoli and captured Qadhafi's headquarters.
NTC official Ali Tarhuni said their leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, would arrive as soon as the security situation permitted.
Abdel Nagib Mlegta, head of operations for the takeover of the capital, said his fighters now controlled 95 per cent of Tripoli, with just a few pockets of resistance left.
They hoped to control Tripoli fully and capture Qadhafi within 72 hours.
Mlegta alleged that forces loyal to Qadhafi killed more than 150 prisoners with grenades in a “mass murder” as they fled the rebel takeover.
But Amnesty International said Friday that both sides had been guilty of abuses.
In Geneva, the UN human rights chief warned bounty hunters who may be seeking to kill Qadhafi, saying assassinations are “not within the rule of law.”
“That applies to Qadhafi as well as everybody else,” said spokesman Rupert Colville in a response to a question about the reward for Qadhafi, dead or alive.
Colville said the “best solution” would be to capture Qadhafi alive and follow through on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for suspected crimes against humanity.
The rebels want to find Qadhafi so they can proclaim final victory in an uprising that began six months ago and was all but crushed by government forces before Nato warplanes gave crucial air support.
The African Union declined Friday to recognize the NTC and instead called for the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government.
South African President Jacob Zuma said after an AU Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa that the rebels were not yet legitimate.
The AU “encourages the Libyan stakeholders to accelerate the process leading to the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government that would be welcome to occupy a seat in the African Union”, the bloc's Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra told reporters.
With fighting continuing in a conflict that the NTC chief says has killed more than 20,000 people, the horror of the situation was highlighted at a hospital in Tripoli.
