20110327
reuters

BIN JAWAD, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels pushed further west on Sunday to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Gaddafi's retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes.

Emboldened by the capture of the strategic town of Ajdabiyah with the help of foreign warplanes on Saturday, the rebels have regained the initiative and are back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of the North African country.

"There are no Gaddafi soldiers here. We control all the town," rebel fighter Youssef Ahmed, 22, said in the town of Bin Jawad, 525 km (330 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.

A Reuters correspondent in Bin Jawad saw more than two dozen rebel pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns in the town centre, as fighters were shooting in the air in celebration.

Bin Jawad is the westernmost point the rebels reached in early March, before they were pushed back by Gaddafi's better-equipped forces to their stronghold of Benghazi.

Rebels said Gaddafi loyalists had retreated westwards and that they planned to push on towards Sirte, the Libyan leader's heavily defended home area on the Mediterranean coast.

"We want to go to Sirte today. I don't know if it will happen," said 25-year-old Marjai Agouri as he waited with another 100 rebels along the main coastal road outside Bin Jawad with three multiple rocket launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and around a dozen pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

The rebel advance is a rapid reversal of three weeks of losses and indicates Western air strikes under by a U.N. no-fly zone are shifting the battlefield dynamics in their favour.