Tanks said closing in on rebel-held square in Libya

Snipers shooting at anything that moves, rebels and residents.

TRIPOLI: The tanks of pro-Qaddafi forces were closing in on the rebel-held main square of Zawiyah on Wednesday and their snipers were shooting at anything that moved, rebels and residents said.

Bodies were lying unrecovered in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids earlier in the week. There was no one in the streets of the centre of the city of 200,000 and it was not possible to verify the reports independently.

"We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere," the rebel fighter told Reuters by phone from inside Zawiyah, which lies 50 km west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The fighter, named Ibrahim, said forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi were in control of the main road and the suburbs of Zawiyah, which in the past three days has become the focal point of a civil war on two fronts to oust the 41-year-old Qaddafi regime.

Rebel forces still controlled Zawiyah square, and the enemy was about 1,500 metres away, Ibrahim said.

There were army snipers on top of most of the buildings, shooting whomever dared to leave their homes. Half of the city was destroyed by air attacks, including a mosque.

Zawiyah was, briefly, described as a rebel stronghold in the uprising which erupted against Qaddafi last month. But it may now be on the verge of changing hands.

"The situation is not so good," said a resident reporting by telephone. Civilians are pinned down in their houses, unable to flee from the mounting violence.

"No one can move outside their homes because they there are snipers everywhere," he added.

Many Dead

Ibrahim said Qaddafi forces "have surrounded the square with snipers and tanks" but rebels were holding on to the central square area.

"It's very scary. There are a lot of snipers," he said.

But he said rebel forces still held the central square area.

"There are many dead people and they can't even bury them. Zawiyah is deserted. There's nobody on the streets. No animals, not even birds in the sky," he said.

He said rebels had killed a high-ranking cousin of Qaddafi in fighting earlier in the week, and "that's why he bombed the city. They wanted to retrieve the body and they did."

He said about 60 rebel fighters had gone out from the city to attack an army base on Tuesday about 20 km from Zawiyah.

"None of them has returned and we don't know if they're dead or alive. We haven't heard from them," he said.

Heavy fighting shuts gasoline refinery

Heavy fighting has forced the shutdown of one of Libya's biggest refineries on the edge of the flashpoint town of Zawiyah 50 km west of Tripoli, a refinery official said on Wednesday.

"Heavy weapons have been fired nearby and we can't run the refinery under these conditions," the official told Reuters.

The Zawiyah refinery is the biggest provider of gasoline for cars in Libya, and has a total capacity of 120,000 barrels per day. The refinery has been operating at 70 percent capacity for the past two weeks.

The official said he planned to open the refinery later on Wednesday but it was not clear whether it would be possible.

Any sustained shutdowns at the refinery in the city of 250,000 could add to instability in Libya as government forces try to crush rebels determined to topple the country's leader Muammar Qaddafi.