Reuters For months the Libyan fighters who toppled Muammar Gaddafi both craved and dreaded the battle for his hometown Sirte. Nearly two weeks of costly fighting have made it clear why. The fall of the coastal enclave would be a major strategic and psychological boost to the country's new rulers as they try to stamp out pockets of Gaddafi loyalists, and could encourage the surrender of the other major remaining bastion, Bani Walid. But the fighters face a cornered and desperate foe that knows how to take advantage of its urban terrain, and parts of the battered city are, by many accounts, still full of terrified civilians caught in the crossfire. The hazardous mix means the former rebels will have to strike a deft balance between a long fight that would delay their efforts to govern and a bloody victory that would worsen regional divisions and embarrass the fledgling government and its foreign backers. “Sirte will be captured eventually, but the question is at what cost to the civilian population and the rebels' international reputation,” Shashank Joshi, Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said. “The biggest challenge they face is that Sirte is a well-defended urban position, and that is one of the hardest challenges in modern warfare.” Loyalists holed up inside the city have already repulsed two major assaults by forces affiliated with Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), using snipers, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. More than 50 of the former rebels have been killed and over 460 wounded on the city's western front alone since brigades from the port city of Misrata began the advance into Sirte on Sept. 15, according to records at an NTC field hospital. One push into the city center, supported by NATO airstrikes, was repulsed, forcing NTC forces outside the city, which had a population of about 100,000 before fighting broke out. Many of the NTC fighters are well armed, but this hasn't been enough to uproot their entrenched enemies. Anti-Gaddafi officials say some of the toppled leader's most hardened loyalists fell back to Sirte when the rebellion spread. Some believe they include Gaddafi's army officer son Mutassem. The fighters, few of them with much military training, have appeared unable or unwilling to hold gains overnight. Many of their vehicle-mounted machine gun and rocket launchers head back to Misrata or to Sirte's outskirts at sunset. “A combined arms assault with well-trained forces could do it, but the rebels don't meet this description,” Joshi said. “Cities offer numerous defensive positions, fortifications, obstacles to armour, and in Sirte all this is compounded by the tribal make-up of the city.” Thousands of Sirte residents have poured out of the city since fighting started, describing shortages of food, water, electricity and other basic goods inside - reports that have raised the alarm of humanitarian organisations. The safety of non-combatants is a sensitive issue for Libya's new government. __
