Rebel forces close on gateway to Tripoli

Libyan rebels made a big push on the western front reportedly entering the city of Zawiyah, about 40 km west of the capital Tripoli, after fierce battles with Moammar Gaddafi's forces, a rebel official said on Saturday.

Abdul Muhammad, of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), said that the rebel soldiers had entered Zawiyah from both south and west sides, Chinese Xinhua reported.

Zawiyah located on the main highway on the way to Tunisia, has been a lifeline for Gaddafi regime and its only functioning oil refinery.

In the east, rebels had captured one of the three residential district of Brega on Thursday, but Gaddafi's forces still hold western parts of the town where the oil facilities are located, Xinhua reported.

Reuters also confirmed gunfire was heard in Zawiyah on Saturday, a Reuters TV producer on the outskirts of the town said. The producer and other journalists were traveling from the Tunisian border to Tripoli but had to turn back because the road was blocked where it passes near Zawiyah.

The Libyan regime denies these advances. Zawiyah is "absolutely under our control", the Gaddafi government said on Saturday.

"A very small group of rebels tried to move into the south of Zawiyah but they were stopped easily because of our armed forces," spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli. He said fewer than 100 rebels entered the city from the south and they tried to join up with 50 rebels within the city, who had been "dealt with."

Meanwhile, Dozens of Libyan families have been taking advantage of the fighting to flee Tripoli and head south into the mountains, the AP reported.

The families were making their way through desert back roads that appeared to be less guarded amid the fighting between rebels and Gaddafi's forces near Bir Ghanam, 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Tripoli.

The rebels said they registered 55 families that fled Tripoli in the past three days for the Nafusa mountains. Many were originally from the west but had escaped to Tripoli when the fighting broke out in the mountains months ago.

One of those on the road, Sassi Ahmed, a 47-year-old social studies teacher, said he left Tripoli with his wife and six children because the situation in the capital was “very dangerous and frightening,” with no gas or electricity.