Pro-government forces in Libya yesterday battled Islamic State group militants and cornered them in their last holdouts in Sirte, a day after heavy clashes that killed and wounded dozens.
The forces loyal to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) launched an offensive more than three months ago to drive IS from the coastal city, and they have been backed by US air raids for almost a month.
IS overran the Mediterranean hometown of Libya’s slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi in mid-2015, sparking fears the militants would use it as a springboard for attacks on Europe.
Pro-GNA forces said they had encircled the militants in less than 2sq km of Sirte, after staging an assault the previous day on its last two IS-held districts.
The anti-IS fighters “seized a little more than half of district Number Three and 70% of district Number One” in the downtown seafront area, they said.
In the evening they pushed further into the militants’ last holdouts backed by tanks and artillery, said Reda Issa, a spokesman for the pro-GNA campaign.
“Fighting broke out against IS snipers after the new advance,” he said.
At least six pro-GNA forces were killed, medical sources at a field hospital for the loyalists said on its Facebook page.
At least 38 pro-GNA fighters were killed 185 others wounded yesterday when the loyalist forces announced the “final battle” to retake all of Sirte, said medical officials at the nearby Misrata hospital.
IS casualty figures have been unavailable.
The Misrata hospital was filled yesterday with wounded fighters after it was forced the previous day to turn its main reception into a second emergency room to accommodate all the casualties, an AFP photographer said.
“It was a bloody day,” doctor Akram Jumaa said.”I carried out dozens of surgeries that lasted until this morning, and some others are still ongoing.”
Mohamed Quweid, a nurse, bemoaned the lack of means to treat casualties.
“There aren’t enough rooms so sometimes we have to put five or six fighters together in the same room.”
The militants have sent in at least 12 suicide car bombers since Sunday, pro-GNA forces said.
On Sunday loyalists seized several IS positions, including the Qortoba mosque in district Number Three which the militants had renamed after slain Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
IS had set fire to the mosque’s library, killed an imam and used its courtyard for “torture and executions”, the media office of the Sirte operation said.
Pro-GNA forces fought their way into Sirte a year later, on June 9, but their advance has been hampered by snipers, suicide bombings and booby traps.
More than 400 loyalist fighters have been killed and nearly 2,500 wounded in the battle for Sirte since May, medical sources say.
The pro-GNA forces are mostly militias from western cities backing the unity government of premier-designate Fayez al-Sarraj and the guards of oil installations that IS has repeatedly tried to seize.
Backed by US air strikes since August 1, they seized the militants’ headquarters at the Ouagadougou conference centre on August 10, pinning down IS fighters near the sea.