Libyan rebels said they were sending in special forces units in their hunt for fugitive strongman Muammar Gaddafi, whose supporters are now pinned down in pockets of resistance in the capital, Tripoli.
The rebel leadership announced it was planning to move from the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolution to topple Gaddafi began six months ago, to govern the country from Tripoli.
Rumours of Gaddafi or his sons being cornered or sighted swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machinegun and rocket exchanges.
But even after his compound was overrun on Tuesday, hopes of a swift end to the war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.
The rebels’ Col. Hisham Buhagiar said they were targeting several areas to find Gaddafi: “We are sending special forces every day to hunt down Gaddafi. We have one unit that does intelligence and other units that hunt him down.”
Loyalist forces are still present in several areas of the city, some of them flying rebel banners rather than the green flags of the Gaddafi era, Reuters correspondents said.
NATO warplanes, whose support has been crucial to the rebels’ advance into the capital, could be heard over Tripoli during the night, residents said.
A measure of the rebels’ grip on the capital would be apparent at Friday prayers later in the day.
As the insurgency developed, Gaddafi’s security forces saw the weekly worship as a protest and shot people as they exited mosques.
Western powers have demanded Gaddafi’s surrender and worked to help the opposition start developing the trappings of government and bureaucracy lacking in the oil-rich state after 42 years of an eccentric personality cult.
The U. S. and South Africa struck a deal to allow the release of 1.5 billion dollars in frozen funds for humanitarian aid and other civilian needs, UN diplomats said.
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