The fog of rumour shrouds Gaddafi flank attack

NEAR AJDABIYA (Libya), Apr 9 (AFP): The captives brought back by Libyan rebel fighters seemed to prove the morning rumours that Muammar Gaddafi's forces were in retreat. Then the flank attack came less than an hour later. Before long, Gaddafi's forces were bombarding the outskirts of Ajdabiya - a crucial crossroads town the rebels had seized twice before - as civilians and fighters sped back towards the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. The apparent flanking move underscored a key weakness of the rebel forces - their lack of the kind of communications equipment that could give them updated and detailed knowledge of events across the vast desert battlefield. On Saturday morning a few dozen rebels were gathered between Ajdabiya and Brega, an oil town they have been trying to take for weeks. A defected army officer declined to speak to reporters, barking "Military secrets!" before stalking off to supervise the loading of a truck-mounted Grad rocket launcher that then sped off to the front. Several similar vehicles pulled in shortly afterwards, reloading and then heading back, their outgoing fire apparently too far off to be audible. Then the prisoners arrived, one huddled in the back of a four-by-four and the other laid out in the bed of a pick-up truck, one arm shielding his eyes from the rebels' camera phones and the other oozing blood from an open gash. As the two were whisked off to Benghazi there was talk that the rebels had taken Brega, but of course there was no way to confirm it. There are few identifiable rebel commanders at the front. There is no mobile phone network, and few of the rebels have satellite phones. News travels by word of mouth up and down the road, and rumours swirl across the desert. NATO, the only force involved in the conflict with access to a bird's eye view of the battlefield, has said it is hard to differentiate between rebels and loyalists. "The fighting between Brega and Ajdabiya, where the strike (on the tanks) occurred, has been fierce for several days," it said after Thursday's attack. "The situation is unclear and fluid with mechanised weapons travelling in all directions." On Saturday the story of the war was told, not by those taking part in it, but by the line of vehicles speeding back from Brega, the Grad rocket launchers no longer stopping to reload, but taking up positions nearby.