Bryan Denton for The New York Times A rebel on the road near Brega, Libya.BREGA, Libya — Libyan rebels resumed their offensive on Friday by massing heavier weapons in an attack on this eastern oil town, but were repulsed in the fading light of afternoon and backtracked along a main road under fire.
The thwarted attack left the two sides locked in stalemate on the main coastal highway. Since last week, the loyalists have lost possession of many of eastern Libya’s largest cities after suffering through coalition airstrikes. But the rebels have thus far been unable to seize and hold important oil regions along the road to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, that could be vital to their economic security.
The rebels fled Brega in a headlong retreat on Wednesday, and on Thursday made a hesitating advance toward the town’s northern entrance, only to be stalled before nightfall by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But in a sign that showed a nascent degree of organization, the rebels on Thursday night moved GRAD multiple rocket launchers from their capital, Benghazi, toward the front lines. Early Friday they deployed their weapons behind a knoll and small cluster of gullies several miles north of the contested town.
Armed men massed a few miles back, chanting prayers. They arrived by bus, car and truck, and their numbers grew as the hours passed. Many predicted victory in anticipation of their attack.
“Tripoli!” one of them yelled, as his pickup truck moved toward the fight.
Others had more realistic ambitions. “We are trying to take Brega,” said a Badruddin Faraj, 45, a calm and well-equipped fighter who claimed to be a lieutenant colonel.
Mr. Faraj said that the rebels had an unclear picture of how many loyalist fighters remained in Brega, but said he did not believe more than a few hundred soldiers stood between the rebels and the town. Early in the afternoon, he said, the rebel plan was almost set — a forward team would fire the rockets on the loyalists in the town, he said, and then, “God willing, we will go.”
As he spoke, explosions could be heard intermittently on the horizon, along with the sound of heavy machine guns.
But as the hours passed, the prospects for attack became to seem uncertain, and the rebel weaknesses — of a sort one might expect of a paramilitary formed from scratch in a matter of weeks — became self-evident.
At 2 p.m., as the fighters waited in an undisciplined crowd overlooking the GRAD launchers, a muffled gunshot was heard. One of the rebels had accidentally shot himself through his torso. He fell to the dirt. He was rushed away in ambulance, as rebels argued and shoved each other around a small pool of his blood.
At 2:45 the mood was lifted anew, with the arrival of Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, Libya’s former interior minister and current chief of staff of the rebel military, who is one of two men said to command rebel forces.
Shortly after 3 p.m., General Younes drove in a small entourage out onto the desert plain short of Brega. His troops gathered around him as he drove slowly through the ranks; they walked beside him firing rifles and machine guns in the air. He left the lines, and soon after the rebel attack began, opening with volleys of rockets.
Each whooshed from its launcher and climbed in a flaming arc toward Brega.
The attack was impressive for its display of firepower but unimpressive in its coordination. It was unclear if the rebels knew precisely what their targets were or if they were simply lobbing high-explosives toward the town.
Matters continued in this fashion, as several rebel trucks with four-tube rocket launchers drove forward, stopped abruptly and fired their munitions in the general direction of Brega.
Each time, the crowd of soldiers cheered and fired weapons in the air in celebration. But rockets fired this way rarely hit their mark, and are generally ineffective against any trained military force.
Nonetheless, the rebels chanted, danced and cheered. Buoyed by the roar of outgoing fire as the attack continued, intermittently, they passed out food and acted as though they might rush for Brega until 4:25 p.m. Then things abruptly changed again.
Throughout the day there had been little incoming artillery or mortar fire, and the rebels seemed to hope that coalition air attacks overnight may have destroyed or chased away the heavy weapons that had caused them to panic in the preceding days.
(A few military aircraft were visible overhead during the afternoon, but no airstrikes were audible; this may have been due to a stiff desert wind that blew all day, muffling sound.)
Why the loyalists had held fire was not clear, but shortly before 4:30, they made their appearance, as two high-explosive rounds landed in the desert about 1,000 yards away from the front of the rebel column. The rebels heard each crunching impact and explosion, and watched the black smoke rise.
There was a lull for a few minutes.
A few of the rebels continued to shout slogans and prayers. But those who had been in the previous shelling on this same ground, and knew something of how indirect fire is organized, suspected that a forward observer and a gun crew were adjusting the loyalists’ weapons, bracketing for a fuller strike against the crowd and scrum of vehicles on the open highway.
The next round confirmed what was happening, landing squarely beside the highway with a blast that sprayed shrapnel through the crowd. Then came more. Bedlam ensued.
The rebels turned and ran, leaping onto and into vehicles in another retreat. Some fired wildly. Most simply bolted, one man with such haste that he rode away clinging to the roof of a truck, hunched over, trying to make himself small.
A few machine gun rounds puffed in the dirt as the trucks puzzled on the shoulders of the road through a honking scrum of k-turns and u-turns before the race for the nearest knoll, roughly a few miles back up the road.
The loyalists had fired on this road for three days now; they knew the range.
Rounds exploded near and beside the retreating column as it made its way north, ending the day much as it began, with Brega in the possession of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels holding most of the road, and the two sides in position to try again soon.
Rebels said at nightfall that they were fighting for the eastern gate of the city, and had a toe-hold in Brega — a claim that could not be independently confirmed.