Fighters loyal to the National Transitional Council, the new rulers of Libya on Saturday came up against heavy sniper shootings fired by former leader Muammar Al Qathafi's forces in his stronghold, the coastal city of Sirte. The NTC replied fire with fire causing casualties on both sides as well as among civilians.

Weeks of heavy clashes and NATO air strikes have so far failed to dislodge Al Qathafi's men from this town, resulting in what is being described as a humanitarian crisis.

The NTC fighters ceased firing and allowed the international Red Cross members to get inside the city, and not only treat the wounded but also to allow them to carry them out of the war-torn town.

Sirte has been running out of drinking water, electricity and adequate food supply with residents continuing to flee the stronghold.

NTC fighters say that after weeks of fighting Al Qathafi’s loyalists inside Sirte, they now hold positions about five kilometres from the city centre. They also said they have seized the Sirte port, military base and airport last week.

Moussa Ibrahim Denies He was Captured

Meanwhile, following a denial by a source close to the NTC that Al Qathafi's spokesman Moussa Ibrahim had been captured, the man himself phoned the Syria-based Arrai. Television station on Saturday to deny the reports of his arrest that had been circulating among the rebels.

Referring to media reports that he was caught in his car outside Sirte disguised as a woman, Ibrahim said he was regularly moving in and out of Al Qathafi's hometown, Sirte.

He told Arrai TV that the information is a lie and does not reflect reality, “because I was near the front of Sirte with 23 fighters," Ibrahim said. He went on to say that they were attacked for over a day-and-a-half by heavily armed rebels, and that there were deaths on both sides."

Meanwhile, reports emanting from the Tunisian capital, Tunis, indicate that the former prime minster in the Al Qathafi regime, Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who has been kept in custody by the Tunisian general prosecutor after a Libyan summons for his extradition, was mulling political asylum in Tunisia. The reports cited the source as being al-Mahmoudi's lawyer.

Baghdadi, who began a hunger strike on Thursday to protest his continued detention, had previously been acquitted by a Tunis appeals court after being sentenced by a court in Tozeur to six months imprisonment for illegal entry into Tunisia.

His lawyer slammed as "illegal" his detention in the Mornaguia prison, some 14 km from the Tunisian capital of Tunis.