Rebels launch offensive in western Libya

BIR AYAD, Libya -- Rebels launched a new offensive Saturday out of their stronghold in Libya's western mountains, battling regime forces in a drive toward the heartland of Moammar Gadhafi's rule on the Mediterranean coast.

Opening a new front, the rebels are aiming to break a monthslong deadlock and eventually fight their way to the capital, Tripoli.

Booms of shelling and rocket fire echoed from the front lines, concentrated around the town of Bir Ghanam, where the rebel force backed by tanks fought Gadhafi's troops much of the day.

Rebels are hoping for a breakthrough in the far west of Libya, frustrated with the stalemate in the center of the country, where their underequipped forces have been unable to budge the battle lines despite five months of NATO airstrikes on Gadhafi's military.

Rebels control most of the eastern half of the country, while Gadhafi's regime holds most of the west, around Tripoli.

At dawn, thousands of opposition fighters pushed out of the Nafusa Mountains, a range near the Tunisian border, into the coastal plain toward their main objectives, Zawiya and Sabratha, two regime-held towns on the Mediterranean west of the capital.

Bir Ghanam, one of their initial targets Saturday, lies a little more than a third of the 50-mile distance to Zawiya.

Rebel commander Col. Jumma Ibrahim said opposition forces had captured Bir Ghanam, had moved a few miles beyond it, and were making advances on a separate highway to Sabratha. His claims could not be independently confirmed.

Zawiya, the rebels' main target on the coast, was the scene of a major uprising by anti-Gadhafi protesters early on in the conflict. The protesters took over the city and drove out regime supporters, but then were brutally crushed in a long, bloody siege.

Earlier this week, the rebels said they hope to reach the Libyan capital before the end of the Muslim fasting holy month of Ramadan, which began Monday.

The fighters Saturday were enthusiastic -- most of them civilians who have taken up arms. On the central fronts, such fighters in the past have often proven undisciplined, charging ahead but then fleeing in the face of heavy resistance.

Also Saturday, a NATO spokesman in Brussels denied reports about a Friday alliance airstrike on a convoy of camels carrying weapons from neighboring Chad.