20110505
reuters

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya's army fired volleys of rockets at the rebel-held town of Zintan in the Western Mountains, pressing on with a campaign that has created a humanitarian crisis and forced thousands to flee the country.

Rebels said more than 40 Grad rockets hit Zintan late on Tuesday, and aid to the western port of Misrata was hindered by artillery fire and mines near the harbour entrance. The city has become one of the bloodiest battlefields in the two-month war.

Rebel spokesmen said fighting had flared again in Misrata's eastern suburbs, but that intense air strikes by NATO planes appeared to have won the port, the city's lifeline, a respite in shelling by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

In Tripoli, witnesses heard two loud explosions late on Tuesday but there was no explanation of their cause.

Gaddafi, who seized power in a 1969 coup, has not been seen in public since a NATO missile attack on Saturday on a house in Tripoli, which killed his youngest son and three grandchildren. Officials in Tripoli said he was in good health.

U.S. intelligence officials believe Gaddafi is alive, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. "(The) best intelligence we have is that he's still alive," Panetta told NBC News.

Vowing to fight to the death, Gaddafi has not followed the examples of fellow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia who stepped down as a tide of popular unrest rolled across the Arab world.

The civil war has split the oil-producing desert state, Africa's fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ragged but dedicated rebel forces.