Taking Airport, Rebels in Libya Loosen Noose

Seizing the airport in Misurata, a city that has been under siege for nearly two months, represented one of the most significant rebel victories in the Libyan conflict and a stiff military and public-relations blow to the Qaddafi government. The airport and its approaches were the last remaining pieces of terrain in the city to be controlled by Qaddafi soldiers.

With these soldiers pushed back, the western area of Misurata appeared by nightfall to be out of range of the most common of the Qaddafi forces’ heavy weapons, including self-propelled artillery, Grad rockets and 120-millimeter mortars, which loyalists have used to fire cluster munitions.

Though potentially reversible, the capture of the airport appeared to be a break in the siege. With the loyalists suffering a string of defeats in recent days and the rebels gaining weapons and confidence, Colonel Qaddafi now appeared weaker than ever before, Misurata residents said. With their advance, the rebels had, at least for the moment, the potential to cut off government forces in the east from those in the west of Libya, threatening the logistics lines of Qaddafi forces.

The rebel commander at the airport added that the rebels, who now have physical control of all of Misurata, Libya’s third largest city, had given the citizens of Libya a psychological milestone that could endanger Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on the capital, Tripoli.

“Any victory we make here will encourage the people of Tripoli,” he said, as he strutted through the airport’s departure terminal, where the abandoned green uniforms of Qaddafi soldiers rested on several luggage carts. “They will say: ‘Qaddafi is weak. Why can he not keep Misurata?’ ”

In Tripoli, 130 miles from Misurata, the rebels’ seizure of the airport prompted a show of defiance from one government spokesman that appeared to mask a growing sense of unease. “This is nonsense: we control the airport and we also control the seaport,” said Moussa Ibrahim, the government spokesman.

Another official gave a more gloomy assessment, effectively acknowledging that morale among Qaddafi loyalists is faltering because of the rebels’ success at Misurata, Western aid to the rebels and the intensifying tempo of NATO airstrikes against targets in Tripoli this week.

“Of course it worries me, that they are coming closer to Tripoli,” the official said. “They have religious people, jihadists, among them, and you don’t know what they will do if they enter Tripoli.”

Colonel Qaddafi reappeared briefly on Libyan state television on Wednesday night. Wearing dark sunglasses, he gestured to his audience and said, “We tell the world: those are the representatives of the Libyan tribes.” The broadcast appeared to have been fashioned to quell rumors about his health and to indicate that he retains support among some of Libya’s fractious tribes.

But in Misurata, after rebel fire silenced what seemed to be the last pockets of resistance at the airport, celebrations broke out by evening. Ambulances roamed the city, sirens wailing, as convoys of machine-gun trucks drove past with gunmen cheering and occasionally firing in the air. “God is great!” they chanted.

In western Misurata, where many families had been hiding, residents emerged by the hundreds, then thousands. Roads once lightly traveled were clogged by traffic jams. “Qaddafi down!” people shouted. “Qaddafi is finished!”

The outpouring of emotion was understandable for a city that had endured fierce house-to-house fighting and absorbed week after week of shelling and rocket fire. It also risked being premature. At the city’s two eastern fronts, Qaddafi soldiers were believed to have Grad rockets and artillery in range of several neighborhoods and the city’s seaport, its sole route for medical evacuations and resupply.

The city’s roughly 500,000 residents remain isolated and in need of food and medical aid.

The commander at the airport, who asked that his name be withheld to prevent retaliation against family members elsewhere in Libya, also said that the rebels were worried that the Qaddafi military had regrouped and gathered reinforcements about 25 miles away, and might counterattack at any time.

Late last month, Misurata’s rebels forced the Qaddafi military from the city’s center in a bloody building-by-building fight. Since then, the lines had largely been static. The Qaddafi forces had taken up defensive positions at various points around the city, and shelled it at will.

On Sunday, after a stepped-up campaign of airstrikes by NATO warplanes, which have been bombing military targets under a United Nations Security Council mandate to protect civilians, the Qaddafi lines began to break anew.

The rebels, riding machine-gun trucks and fighting on foot, pushed westward several miles by Monday, reaching the outskirts of Ad Dafniyah.

On Tuesday the rebels then tried a plan modeled in part on their successes in April on Tripoli Street, one of Misurata’s main boulevards.