Gaddafi fighters mount fierce fight back in Sirte

Moammar Gaddafi loyalists mounted a fierce counter-attack in the city of Sirte on Saturday, forcing back new regime fighters under a barrage of rockets and shelling.Fighters of the National Transitional Council (NTC) fled helter-skelter two kilometres (just over a mile) to the captured police headquarters in the Mediterranean city, one of Gaddafis last holdouts.Run, run, run rang out from the retreating forces.After absorbing rocket fire and shells from NTC fighters in the morning and early afternoon, Gaddafi diehards now concentrated in two neighbourhoods -- the Dollar and Number Two -- unleashed their own barrage late afternoon.As Grad and other rockets, shells and machinegun fire rained down on them, NTC combatants, taken by surprise, quickly fled the positions on the edge of the two neighbourhoods that they had held since Friday night.Thick black smoke covered the two districts as rockets and shells smashed into buildings, setting some ablaze.In a provisional casualty toll issued before the breakout, medics at a field hospital on the western outskirts of Sirte said one person was killed and around a dozen injured on Saturday.Gaddafi fighters are now concentrated in a small place but we cant enter all at the same time. We need a plan to defeat them, Omran Allahoyb, commander of a Misrata brigade, said before the pro-Gaddafi advance.We can take this place in one day but I will lose 100 men, he said, adding that the best strategy would be to bomb the area of around 1.5 square kilometres (about half a square mile) into defeat.NTC commanders had earlier said they decided at a meeting to hold off on an all-out assault on the Dollar and Number Two districts in a bid to capture alive the top regime figures they believe are holed up there.The resistance from the two neighbourhoods is high because we believe there are four to five important people inside, eastern front operations chief Wesam bin Hamaibi said after the meeting.