By Maria Golovnina and Sherine El Madany
NORTH OF BANI WALID/EAST OF SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - Fighters representing Libya's new rulers entered one of the last towns loyal to ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi late on Friday and said there was fighting on the streets, in what could mark the start of a final showdown against bastions of Gaddafi control.
"They (anti-Gaddafi fighters) are in the north of the city fighting snipers. We have also entered from the east," National Transition Council official Abdallah Kanshil said outside the desert town of Bani Walid.
The town, along with Gaddafi's home town of Sirte and the desert city of Sabha are among the last places still outside of the control of the NTC, which drove Gaddafi from power last month.
Gaddafi loyalists earlier fired volleys of Grad rockets at fighters north of Bani Walid and east of Sirte, Reuters witnesses said. The NTC said it had also sent fighters south to Sabha.
The NTC had given Bani Walid, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Tripoli, and Sirte until Saturday to give up peacefully or face attack in what could be some of the last battles in the six-month civil war.
Previous deadlines have been extended to allow time for talks to avoid more bloodshed in a conflict which is believed to have claimed thousands of lives.
Ambulances streamed back and forth with casualties from near Bani Walid, and NTC fighters grabbed crates of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars and raced to the front.
In Teassain, 90 km east of Sirte, Reuters witnesses saw heavy rocket exchanges between NTC forces and Gaddafi loyalists.
Families trickled out of Bani Walid before the fighting intensified, belongings crammed into their cars.
"I'm taking my family away from war," said Khalid Ahmouda, stopping his car briefly to speak to Reuters. "They are afraid because there will be a big fight today or tomorrow."
His veiled wife, Oum Abdurahman, leaned from a window, holding her baby son. "There's no power, no food, no water. Many people want to leave but have no fuel for their cars and Gaddafi forces are preventing people from leaving," she said.
"They fire in the air to terrorise people. Today we managed to leave," she said, adding that her brother-in-law was among 11 people killed on May 25 in a crackdown on townsfolk who had staged anti-Gaddafi protests.
NTC officials at a checkpoint 30 km from Bani Walid said Gaddafi fighters had been captured. Reuters witnesses saw some men driven away with their hands tied behind them, as well as two bodies, said to be Gaddafi fighters, in a pick-up truck.
NTC fighters say that only about 150 well-armed Gaddafi loyalists are holed up in the town, with dozens of pick-up trucks fitted with anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns, as well as multiple rocket launchers and artillery.
Smoke rose from the front line, now just five km from the town, as NATO planes roared overhead.
GADDAFI ON THE RUN
Muammar Gaddafi's location has been a mystery, but he insisted in a defiant message broadcast on Thursday that he was still in Libya to lead the fight against what he called "rats" and "stray dogs" who had taken over the capital.
Four of his top officials, including his air force commander and a general in charge of his forces in the south, were among a new group of Libyans who have fled to neighbouring Niger, officials in Niger said.
General Ali Kana, the southern commander, and Ali Sharif al-Rifi, the air force chief, were among 14 Libyans who arrived in the north Niger town of Agadez on Thursday, crossing the border in a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles, the officials said.
A Reuters reporter in Agadez said the four senior men appeared to be staying at the luxury Etoile du Tenere hotel, said to be owned by Gaddafi, who stayed there during a Muslim holiday in 2007.
Niger, under pressure from the West and Libya's new rulers to hand over former Gaddafi officials suspected of human rights abuses, said it would respect its commitments to the International Criminal Court if Gaddafi or his sons arrived.
"We are signatories of the (ICC's) Rome Statute so they know what they are exposed to if they come," Massaoudou Hassoumi, the head of President Mahamadou Issoufou's cabinet, told Reuters.
He said the latest arrivals were "under control" in Agadez, through which the head of Gaddafi's security brigades, Mansour Dhao, passed earlier this week en route to the capital Niamey.
"We are taking them in on humanitarian grounds. No one has told us that these are wanted people," said Hassoumi.
Joining the hunt for Gaddafi, Interpol issued arrest warrants for him, his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who are all wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suspected crimes against humanity.
A Tunis-based NTC official, Moussa al-Kouni, told al Arabiya television he believed Gaddafi was somewhere in the southern desert that stretches into Niger and Mauritania.
"He is not in a city. He is not in Agadez. It is difficult to catch him. We will need intelligence tips from the residents of the desert," he said, adding that Gaddafi could be disguised as a local shepherd or nomad.
Niger, which only this year returned to civilian rule and is fighting al Qaeda-linked groups in its desert north, fears the Libya conflict might spill over, said cabinet chief Hassoumi.
"We have prepared for a worst-case scenario, for example if Bani Walid and Sirte were to fall by force, it could cause a massive stampede of armed groups into Niger," he said.
In Tripoli, the decomposed bodies of 18 people were brought late on Thursday to Tripoli's central hospital after they were found in unmarked graves in Rbane, 120 km east of the capital, medical workers at the hospital said.
Witnesses told Reuters earlier this week that the Gaddafi government had been operating special squads in nearby Khoms which detained suspected opposition activists, tortured them, and locked them in shipping containers where many of them died from dehydration and a lack of air.
One former detainee, Mohammed Ahmed Ali, said he had been held in a shipping container with about 20 other people, and that all but two of them died.
(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, Alex Dziadosz, Mohammed Abbas and Mohammad Ben-Hussein in Tripoli, Barry Malone and Sylvia Westall in Tunis, Abdoulaye Massalatchi in Agadez, Nathalie Prevost in Niamey, John Irish in Paris, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
