Libyan Rebels Near Misurata Struggle to Advance

The Washington Post reports:

Outside Misurata, the rebel army is stuck.

For weeks, the fighters opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s government have been bogged down in the lightly wooded areas surrounding this besieged city, pounded by rockets, struggling to advance or even make gains of more than a few hundred yards.

“We are just taking a defensive position now,” said Suliman Mohamed Suliman, one of the commanders at the city’s eastern front line. “We can’t [advance] because we don’t have heavy weapons, just light weapons. We need grenades, we need tanks and heavy artillery.”

In mid-May, Misurata’s newly improvised volunteer forces managed to expel Gaddafi’s professional troops from their city, about 130 miles east of the capital, Tripoli, after weeks of closely fought urban warfare. But despite their early successes, they are struggling to make progress.