A spokesman for Muammar Gaddafi has claimed that a NATO airstrike on the town of Sirte has killed 354 people.
Moussa Ibrahim said an overnight airstrike on Sirte had hit a residential building and a hotel, killing hundreds and increasing the towns death-toll from such attacks to over 2,000.
There has been no way to independently verify the claims as the town has been isolated since Tripoli fell. A spokesperson for NATO said such claims had proven to be false in the past.
Speaking to Reuters via satellite phone Ibrahim also said Col Gaddafi himself was still in Libya and leading resistance against the interim government’s forces.
"We will be able to continue this fight and we have enough arms for months and months to come," he said.
Today the National Transitional Council’s troops have charged back into the besieged desert town of Bani Walid, a day after diehard loyalists of Col Gaddafi beat them back into a humiliating retreat.
Interim government fighters are bogged down in sieges of his loyalists' remaining holdouts, raising doubt over whether they can quickly unite the country.
A column of NTC pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft machine guns and fresh ammunition rushed into Bani Walid as dusk fell, after Col Gaddafi’s forces shelled a checkpoint.
"Gaddafi forces attacked the checkpoint so our troops went in. There is a lot of fighting inside the city right now," senior regional NTC official Abdullah Kenshil said.
In Sirte, NTC forces have entered the city from the west and captured nearby Herawa to the east, but have not been able to dislodge tenacious Gaddafi fighters.
