The Zawiya rebels, who include mutinous army forces, are armed with tanks, machine guns and anti-aircraft guns. They fought back pro-Gadhafi troops, armed with the same weapons, who attacked from six directions. There was no word on casualties.
Earlier, there was some sort of skirmish launched by loyalists still holding a toe hold at the Misrata airport. But the rebels repelled the attack.
So the loyalists have been the first to try to break the stalemate. But the loyalists have more need to break the stalemate and achieve a victory before either someone in the West decides to intervene or the loyalists break ranks further and give up, or the rebels scrape up an army to march west:
The Libyan rebels have apparently agreed to let the army handle taking Tripoli. The Libyan armed forces are not a particularly powerful or professional organization. But against Kaddafi's thousands of professional thugs (members of numerous intelligence and security agencies, plus mercenaries), some sort of organized force is needed. The army is incorporating volunteers (usually men who had served in the army) and trying to gather as many working weapons (especially armored vehicles and aircraft) as possible. There's lots of decrepit, elderly, military equipment in Libya (Kaddafi was an indiscriminate shopaholic when it came to weapons), a reminder of how so much oil wealth was wasted. Most of this stuff is junk, but some is a challenge for anyone with technical skills and a desire to fight.
Getting weapons and vehicles in working order, organizing forces and logistical support, and developing a plan to use what they can scrape up to advance west and achieve a victory could end the war. I have no idea how long it will take the rebels to gear up for an offensive. They certainly have a lot to do. We could effectively help in this area, I think, without direct intervention.
The question is can Khaddafi strike effectively before the rebels can move out to try to win the war?
UPDATE: Defenders of Zawiya launched small attacks on the loyalist checkpoints around the city. It could be that Khaddafi feels he is besieging the city and that hunger will make it fall to him. Of course, that assumes that news reports of hungry children don't prompt NATO air drops of humanitarian supplies directly into the city center. Khaddafi would be better off seizing the city sooner rather than later.
UPDATE: Loyalist forces did have some success in areas surrounding Tripoli:
Gadhafi's regime has retaken at least two towns and threatened a third, while rebels repulsed attacks on three other key areas — Misrata to the east, Zawiya to the west, and the mountain town of Zintan to the south of the capital.
One of those retaken was the strategic mountain town of Gharyan, the largest in the Nafusa Mountains, which overlooks Tripoli, a resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation. The town fell after dark Friday in a surprise attack, and the government troops detained officers who defected to the rebels and drew up lists of wanted protesters and started searching for them, the resident added.
Gadhafi supporters also have said they were in control of the city of Sabratha, west of Tripoli, which has seemed to go back and forth between the two camps in the past week.
That's a start to build some confidence in the loyalist forces. But the Khaddafi forces still need Zawiya to begin to lock down the western oil industry infrastructure and Misrata to open up lines of communication to the Sirte area which I've heard is friendly to Khaddafi, although I don't know the status of control now.
But Khaddafi's forces are clearly rousing themselves to attack and expand their zone. Will the rebels organize forces to mount their own offensive before the loyalists can start locking down the western region?
