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Factbox: Rebels target Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte
Rebels in the east of Libya have advanced rapidly west along the Mediterranean coast aided by Western air strikes towards Sirte, a city near the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi which he has showered with cash.
Rebels in the east of Libya have advanced rapidly west along the Mediterranean coast aided by Western air strikes towards Sirte, a city near the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi which he has showered with cash.
A spokesman in Benghazi said that rebels had captured Sirte on Monday, but a correspondent in the city said there was no sign of that.
Below are details about the city:
-- Gaddafi fashioned the city, which is about 400 km (250 miles) east of Tripoli, into a second capital designed in his own extravagant image. It had been a small, obscure town before the Libyan leader seized power in 1969.
-- Sirte does not have major energy infrastructure although it is close to major oil reserves. But it still has strategic significance because of a civilian airport that also appears to host a military air base. Satellite images show about 50 reinforced concrete hangars, of the kind usually used to protect fighter planes, in clusters at either end of the runway.
-- A Libyan government spokesman said on March 21 that the airport had been bombed by Western air strikes. He described it as a civilian airport.
-- The centrepiece of Gaddafi's ambitious construction project is the Ouagadougou conference centre. It is a huge marble-lined hall where Gaddafi hosts summits of foreign heads of state. Gaddafi has a tent complex on the beach nearby where favoured leaders are invited to spend the evening.
-- Sirte was where the founding document of the African Union, which has since become known as the Sirte declaration and one of Gaddafi's proudest achievements, was signed in 1999.
-- A US embassy cable published by the WikiLeaks website described a summit of African leaders in Sirte as a "Gaddafi-centric dog and pony show". During international summits, the city is heavily guarded and soldiers line the desert roads leading there every few hundred metres (yards).
-- Traffic was stopped whenever Gaddafi's convoy swept by with its dozens of sports utility vehicles, police outriders on Harley-Davidson motorbikes, and a huge motorhome with communications aerials sticking out of the roof.
