Libya: Gaddafi's forces recapture Ras Lanuf

Hammered by Muammar Gaddafi's tanks, heavy guns and rockets, rebel forces were in panicky retreat in east Libya on Wednesday, fleeing from the oil towns of Ras Lanuf and Brega prompting United States and its allies to mull arming the ragtag fighters.

Having halted the rebels' march 100 km from their leaders hometown of Sirte, Gaddafi's armoured columns chased the rebels right into Ras Lanuf, 370 km west of the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, Al Jazeera reported. Faced by a heavy barrage of shells exploding all round them, the rebel fighters fled on board pickup trucks reversing in advance triggered by heavy strikes carried out by French and British fighters on March 19.

"We can't fight tanks with our machine guns," the Arab channel quoted opposition fighters as saying, as they beseeched for intervention by allied warplanes.

"Tell Sarkozy and Cameron that we need help and without air strikes Gaddafi will massacre us," the rebel fighters said as US President Barack Obama's administration did not rule out the possibility of arming the rebels. "I'm not ruling it out. But I'm also not ruling it in. We're assessing what Gaddafi is upto," Obama said.  He said though the "noose" was tightening around Gaddafi, but they were still no signs that he was seeking to negotiating an exit from Libya.

"Our expectation is that as we continue to apply steady pressure, not only militarily but through other means, Gaddafi will step down," Obama said. Correspondents on the frontline reported that the rout of rebels illustrating how much they rely on international power policy.

"Only a day earlier, they had been marching westward, they would take Sirte, Gaddafi's main bastion, in central Libya. They reached 100 km of the city before they were hammered by Gaddafi's forces, who pushed them back to Bin Jawad," Al Arabia correspondent said from the frontline. But now Gaddafi's artillery is shelling even the key town of Brega.

As heavy battles raged on the eastern front, allied bombers and Tomahawk missiles kept up their pounding of the capital Tripoli.

Loud explosions rocked the city close to Gaddafi's heavily guarded residence and the military targets in the suburbs of Tajura. The first explosion was heard near Bab Al-Azizya district, which houses Gaddafi's residence and few more exploded minutes later, the BBC correspondent in the city reported.

Heavy fighting also continue to rage around the western town of Misruta, Libya's third largest city, which has been under siege by Gaddafi's forces for the past two weeks. Local residents said more than 150 people have been killed in the city after Gaddafi's tanks stormed into the city centre. The prospects of supplying heavy weaponry to the rebels has triggered a fierce debate in the US, New York Times said with some fearful that providing arms would deepen American involvement in a civil war and intelligence reports that some rebel fighters may have links to Al Qaeda.

The debate has drawn in the White House, the US state department and the Pentagon and has prompted calls for intelligence on whether some of the rebels waging a war with Gaddafi may have Al Qaeda links.

The fears have arisen after a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander Admiral James G. Stavridis told a Senate hearing that there were flickers in intelligence reports about the presence of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah members among the anti-Gaddafi forces.

Eastern Libya was the centre of Islamists protest in the late 1990s, the US media reports said it was unclear how many groups still retain ties to Al Qaeda.