More Surt stories

Kareem Fahim has another article in The New York Times on the fall of Surt:

Fighters battling Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s loyalists entered the coastal city of Surt from the east as residents fleeing the besieged city, one of the loyalists’ few remaining strongholds, warned of an escalating toll from the fighting.
The foray by the former rebels, backed by a heavy bombardment from NATO warplanes, brought them to a traffic circle more than a mile from the city center, Reuters reported. In recent days, the former rebels have struck deep into the city from the west, only to be beaten back by heavy resistance from pro-Qaddafi fighters ensconced in the city.
As the anti-Qaddafi forces have struggled to unify Libya politically, the continuing, pitched battle for Surt, one of only two remaining Qaddafi strongholds, has become one of their most urgent concerns. To declare an end to the conflict, they have suggested that they need to capture the city. They have struggled to do so, facing resistance from both Qaddafi troops and, residents say, from citizen volunteers who either fear the former rebels or remain loyal to the colonel.
And the frustrated response by the anti-Qaddafi fighters— including pounding the city with heavy weapons— has raised fears of a mounting civilian toll. The International Committee for the Red Cross and other aid agencies have warned that food and medical supplies are running short and have told the combatants to avoid civilian casualties.
A doctor interviewed by The Associated Press, Eman Mohammed, said that many of the recent wounds at the city’s central Ibn Sina Hospital seemed to have been caused by shelling by the former rebels. There was no oxygen in the operating rooms, she said, and few staff members to treat patients.
Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Colonel Qaddafi, told Reuters that he had been moving in and out of the besieged city, despite the fact that anti-Qaddafi fighters surround it on three sides. As for Colonel Qaddafi, Ibrahim declined to comment on his whereabouts, telling Reuters that the deposed leader was “very happy that he is doing his part in this great saga of the resistance”. Ibrahim has claimed that NATO bombings in Surt are killing hundreds of people.
The new government in Tripoli continued to try to sweep away other vestiges of the Qaddafi era. Mohammed al-Alagi, the provisional justice minister, said that exceptional courts that had been used by the Qaddafi government since the 1980s, primarily to prosecute dissidents, were being abolished. Alagi also said the Libyan authorities were passing laws that, for the first time in decades, would ensure a separation of powers between the judiciary and executive branches.
The interim government also said that a mass grave containing the bodies of more than a thousand inmates killed by security forces during a massacre at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in 1996 had been found, Reuters reported. The rebellion that toppled Colonel Qaddafi was ignited by protests in Benghazi last winter that were linked in part to the massacre.
In New York, the interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, thanked the United Nations for intervening to save civilians in Libya. He also asked again that the country’s billions in dollars of global assets be unfrozen in order to assure the country’s stability in the immediate future. Libyans are demanding all kinds of services from the interim government, ranging from housing to electricity to food to freeing the country of weapons.

Rico says Qaddafi's gotta die some day, but couldn't he make it sooner?