Libya: ferocious fighting as rebels head for centre of Sirte

In ferocious close-contact, street-to-street fighting, they took a central residential complex about a mile and half (3km) inside the city.

The fighters are heading for the main street in the city centre, about half a mile away.

Men hunkered on the pavement behind a low wall, taking cover from incoming sniper rounds. Bullets hissed overhead, pinging against gum trees that lined what was once a sleepy neighbourhood.

Rifle butts pointing through the street railings, gunmen shot in the direction of the sniper fire. Pickups armed with heavy machine guns pelted bullets down the street, pushing back loyalist forces.

Artillery trucks followed, supporting the foot patrol as they pushed further into city.

Seven hundred complex - as the residential district is known - was Colonel Gaddafi’s pet project. Homes were said to have been given to members of his tribe and key loyalist supporters. The green walls surrounding the complex were emblazoned with the imprint of the African continent, a reminder of the ousted dictator’s ambitions to be king of Africa.

After two days of heavy fighting, homes stood destroyed and abandoned.

On Friday, battered T55 tanks, rocket-launcher trucks and fighters moved in formation across the expanse of flat scrubland towards the southern city gates.

In the largest co-ordinated onslaught yet, thousands of fighters and armed pickup trucks from dozens of rebel brigades had gathered on roads around the besieged city before dawn.

Brigades from eastern Libya pounded their front, and another brigade advanced along the coastline.

The battle for Sirte is the culmination of the Nato-supported eight-month Libyan civil war. National Transitional Council Chairman Abdel Mustafa Jalil has pinned the full "declaration of Libya", marking the start of a period of political transition, on the fall of the city.