By Youssef Boudlal
YAFRAN, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels entered the mountain town of Yafran Monday, driving out Muammar Gaddafi's forces in a sign NATO air strikes in the area may be paying off.
Yafran had been besieged by pro-Gaddafi forces for more than a month with food, drinking water and medicines running short.
"The rebels say that they have taken the town," said Reuters photographer Youssef Boudlal, after entering the town from the north. "There is no sign of any Gaddafi forces."
Yafran, about 100 km (60 miles) southwest of the Libyan capital, is in the Western Mountains where the local population -- most of them belonging to the Berber ethnic minority -- have risen up against Gaddafi's 41-year rule.
The rebels control the east of Libya, the western city of Misrata and the range of mountains near the border with Tunisia. Their attempts to advance on the capital have been blocked by Gaddafi's better-equipped forces.
It was unclear if Gaddafi forces remained in the south of Yafran.
"I can see the rebel flags ... We have seen posters and photos of Gaddafi that have been destroyed," Boudlal said.
British warplanes destroyed two tanks and two armoured personnel carriers on June 2 in Yafran.
Towns the length of the mountain range have come under attack by pro-Gaddafi forces. Residents who fled said Yafran had suffered some of the worst hardship.
A rebel spokesman called Abdulrahman said Gaddafi's forces had begun bombarding Zintan, another mountain town about 40 km west of Yafran, early Monday with Grad rockets.
"Two civilians were martyred and a third wounded," he said.
"Fighting between the revolutionaries and the brigades (pro-Gaddafi forces) broke out at around 1100 in the Bir Ayyad area, some 50 km northeast of Zintan," he added.
"The revolutionaries destroyed three armoured vehicles. The fighting is still going on."
Accounts from Zintan could not be independently verified because access for reporters is limited.
APACHES ATTACK
NATO attack helicopters were in action in the east on Sunday. Apache helicopters destroyed a rocket launch system on the coast near the eastern town of Brega, Britain's defence ministry said.
A French military source said French planes and helicopters had been operating in Libya every night since Friday, but declined to give further details.
Gaddafi's forces also fired rockets into the rebel-held town of Ajdabiyah in the east Monday and clashes broke out on the main road further west, rebel sources said.
Gaddafi's troops and the eastern rebels have been locked in stalemate for weeks, with neither side able to hold territory on a stretch of road between Ajdabiyah and the Gaddafi-held oil town of Brega further west.
The new deployment of the helicopters is part of a plan to step up military operations and break the deadlock. Critics say it means NATO has gone far beyond its United Nations mandate to protect civilians from attack.
Britain, along with France, has been the driving force behind the NATO military intervention. British Foreign Minister William Hague travelled to Benghazi at the weekend and called on the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) to establish a detailed plan for how they it will run Libya after Gaddafi's departure, to avoid the kind of chaos unleashed in Iraq.
Western governments and rebels say a combination of NATO air strikes, diplomatic isolation and grassroots opposition will eventually bring an end to the Libyan leader's rule.
Gaddafi says he has no intention of stepping down. He insists he is supported by all Libyans apart from a minority of "rats" and al Qaeda militants and says the NATO intervention is designed to steal Libya's abundant oil.
"ROLLOVERS" COULD GO ON
NATO last week decided to extend operations in Libya for another 90 days, or until the end of September.
"We are going to do this until we succeed. Ninety days is a rollover. If we need to roll it over again we will roll it over again," a senior U.S. official said in Brussels. "We are not setting any timelines. What the rollover did, it made it clear we are prepared to be in this until the end."
The Libya contact group of Western and Arab countries agreed in May to provide millions of dollars in non-military aid to help the rebels keep services and the economy running.
They meet Thursday in the United Arab Emirates to discuss the rebel transition road map and make "concrete announcements," a Western diplomatic source said.
In Tripoli, the government condemned Hague's visit to the rebel headquarters as a violation of Libya's sovereignty.
Gaddafi's aides brought foreign media to a hospital on Sunday to see a baby they described as a wounded victim of a NATO air strike.
A hospital staff member, in a note passed to a journalist, said the infant had in fact been injured in a car accident.
Libyan officials were not available to comment on the note. Spokesman Moussa Ibrahim's telephone was not answered.
Gaddafi's government says more than 700 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded by NATO air strikes. However, the media team has not shown foreign reporters based in Tripoli any evidence of large numbers of civilian casualties.
(Additional reporting by Sherine El Madany in Benghazi, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Elizabeth Pineau in Paris; writing and additional reporting by John Irish in Rabat; editing by Andrew Roche)
