Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces began to withdraw from the besieged western city of Misurata on Saturday, a rebel spokesman said, the first stage of a plan announced by the government to turn the fighting over to tribal supporters.
Rebel leaders in the east claimed victory, and fighters fired automatic weapons in the air and supporters blared car horns in celebration here in the provisional rebel capital. But the news of a withdrawal could not be independently confirmed, and there were still reports of heavy fighting in Misurata on Saturday.
Even if the government follows through with the plan it laid out publicly on Friday, it remained far from clear whether the tribes would take up the fight. It was also unclear to what extent the army was forced out militarily by the rebels or whether their withdrawal was a temporary diversion of forces to the Tunisian border, where the rebels seized a strategic crossing last week.
Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said Friday that the army had been given an ultimatum to put down the rebellion in Misurata, or to withdraw and leave the battle to tribal fighters. Mr. Kaim said the tribes would either negotiate a settlement with the rebels, or fight them instead of the military.
Still, a siege that has pounded the city for nearly two months and taken hundreds of lives appeared to have been broken, and the rebels took the news as a defeat for Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
“What we are hearing from Misurata is very positive,” said Jalil el-Gallal, a spokesman for the rebels’ Transitional National Council, their de facto government here in Benghazi.
Government soldiers captured in Misurata on Saturday said they had been in the process of retreating when they were taken by rebel forces. “We have been told to withdraw,” a wounded Libyan soldier, Khaled Dorman, told Reuters. “We were told to withdraw yesterday.”
However, Agence France-Presse quoted a doctor at the main Hikma Hospital as saying that fighting was continuing and that 10 people had been killed on Saturday. Reuters said it was unclear how far the Libyan Army had withdrawn.
Mr. Gallal denounced the move as an attempt by the Qaddafi government to provoke a tribal conflict. “Qaddafi is trying to project the view they are leaving it to the tribes, which is a great concern to us,” he said. “It is a familiar tactic that he has used for a long time, but I think people understand now that he wants to start a tribal war.”
Mr. Gallal said that much of the long-range artillery used by the Libyan military against rebel forces in Misurata had been based in neighboring towns like Tarhuna and Zliten, where rival tribes are based, in an effort to stir up tribal animosity.
“It won’t work,” he said. “Any city he will withdraw from he won’t be able to control again. It’s suicidal on his part.”
Rebel forces were also reported still in control of a border crossing with Tunisia that they had seized on Thursday, according to journalists who were there on Saturday. Libyan authorities claimed to have retaken the crossing. Control of a border with Tunisia would greatly aid the rebellion in Libya’s western mountains, which are 600 miles or more from rebel positions in the east.
In eastern Libya, however, there has been little military activity as a stalemate persists, with the front line between the main rebel forces and pro-government militias still somewhere between Ajdabiya and Brega, as it has been for several weeks.
In Washington, Pentagon officials said Saturday that an armed Predator drone had carried out its first strike on ground targets in Libya since President Obama’s order last week deploying the weapon to the NATO mission. Officials declined to disclose the target.
On Friday, the top American military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the situation was headed toward a stalemate, especially in the east. “At the same time, we’ve attritted somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent of his main ground forces, his ground force capabilities,” Admiral Mullen said during a visit to American troops in Iraq on Friday. “Those will continue to go away over time.”
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