One by one, the milestones on the road to Tripoli are falling

As Gaddafi's forces melt away, rebel eyes turn to the Libyan capital

By Kim Sengupta in Bin Jawad and Donald Macintyre in Sirte
The Independent

"....The rebels' eyes were cast towards Sirte, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace and the centre of loyalist resistance. After that, there is only one more goal: Tripoli. In Bin Jawad yesterday, the enemy was nowhere in sight. And an excursion towards Sirte from Bin Jawad did not reveal any obvious preparations to stop the rebel advance. The few local people who had stayed behind amid the strife described regime forces steadily heading away with the few remnants of their equipment......

The shift in momentum is palpable. Rebels are now back in possession of the two key oil complexes of Ras Lanuf and Brega which handle a sizeable proportion of the 1.5 million barrels a day the country used to export before the uprising.....

The rebels were poised to strike at Tripoli before, but then had to fall back rapidly because of their ineptitude and the superior organisation and discipline of their opponents. But the way the regime's soldiers were melting away yesterday appeared to show that they were unwilling to carry on against what are now, with the involvement of international forces, overwhelming odds.....

Also for the second consecutive week, the rebel fighters had themselves photographed with the wreckage, when they should have been pressing forward, some bringing their families to walk through corpses. Dozens of rounds were fired into the air to celebrate a victory in which the Shabaab had been witnesses rather than participants. A few leaders have begun to emerge since the uprising of 17 February, mainly from among members of the military who defected, and they insisted that there was a new realism about the campaign and lessons have been learned from past mistakes.....

"There were problems," he added. "The Shabaab are very enthusiastic, but they are not professional soldiers and some of them simply would not listen to orders. We saw that by what happened in Bin Jawad the first time. We cannot afford to have something like that happen again."....."