Libya uprising – Saturday 5 March

• Gaddafi counter-attack marks shift towards civil war
• Benghazi rebel council meets for the first time
• Foreigners and refugees flock to Tunisian border
Bangladeshi migrant workers fleeing the Libyan violence march toward a UN transit camp in Tunisia
Bangladeshi migrant workers fleeing the Libyan violence march toward a United Nations transit camp in Ras Jdir, Tunisia Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

Here's a round-up of the main developments so far on Saturday.

Fighting has resumed in Zawiya, 50km (30 miles) west of Tripoli, after rebels earlier repelled a dawn attack by pro-Gaddafi forces to retake the city. Government forces have encircled the city and residents says the centre is under heavy bombardment by tanks and mortars. Around 70 are reported to have been killed and 300 wounded.

Elsewhere opposition forces have continued to advance westward towards Tripoli. The rebels say they have captured Bin Jawad, having taken the oil port town of Ras Lanuf on Friday.

The UN says most of the thousands of foreign workers in Benghazi have been evacuated. But officials remain concerned about thousands of African workers still in Libya, as some have been targeted by rebels who believe they are pro-Gaddafi mercenaries.

Thousands of Shia protesters in Bahrain have formed a huge human chain around the capital, Manama, AP reports.

The Gulf state's Shia majority has held daily demonstrations in a bid to loosen the Sunni monarchy's grip on power. The news agency reports that no police were in sight and organisers said some members of the Sunni minority joined the latest protest.

Reuters has more on the latest attack on on Zawiyah by pro-Gaddafi forces involving heavy shelling by tanks and mortars.

"The fighting has intensified and the tanks are shelling everything on their way. They have shelled houses. Now they are shelling a mosque where hundreds of people are hiding, said local resident Abu Akeel. "We can't rescue anyone because the shelling is so heavy."

Another resident in the main square said: "The attack has started. I see more than 20 tanks."

Some reports suggest more than 70 have been killed and more than 300 wounded.

Seven people were injured after a state security building in the coastal city of Alexandria was set alight on Saturday, Reuters reports.

It is not yet clear who started the blaze, according to the news agency. Some witnesses said they had seen police burning documents in the building, while the police blamed civilians.

The UN refugee agency says most of the thousands of foreign workers in Benghazi have been evacuated and about 10,000 others are heading for a border crossing at Salloum, Egypt.

There has been a sharp fall in the number of migrant workers coming across the border, from a peak of 20,000 several days ago to 1,400-1,800, AP reports. Only 500 had crossed into Tunisia by midday on Saturday, according to a UN official at the border.

People fleeing for Tunisia said they had to pass through dozens of checkpoints on the way from Tripoli to the border. All said they had been robbed by Gaddafi's security forces.

Sony Attakora, 30, said he and several dozen other men from Ghana arrived in Tunisia on Friday, after having money and cell phones taken by Libyan forces. He said the group had tried to travel last week but was ordered back by Libyan troops because of heavy fighting.

Egyptian foreign ministry official Nagui Ghaba said evacuees told him that people are afraid to make the trip to the border because the Libyan army was regrouping and there was the possibility that those fleeing might get caught in the fighting. "We are afraid that the situation in Libya is getting worse," Ghaba said.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, has raised concern over the plight of African workers trapped in Libya.

Aid agencies have reported attacks on sub-Saharan Africans suspected by rebels of being pro-Gaddafi mercenaries.

"There are hundreds of thousands of African workers in Libya, and very few have shown up at the borders," Guterres told David Frost in an interview on al-Jazeera.

Reuters reports that Gaddafi loyalists have shelled the the central square of Zawiyah.

"The attack has started. I see more than 20 tanks," one resident in the square told the news agency.

A second resident said Gaddafi's forces were using "tanks and mortars".

The incursions into Zawiyah by pro-Gaddafi forces and the western advance of the rebels from Bin Jawad suggest that the conflict in Libya could last for weeks and maybe months, AP reports.

The news agency says neither side is currently mustering enough military power to decisively defeat the other - a view echoed by the Guardian's Martin Chulov:

Benghazi's rebels are coming to terms with a revolution that's stalled less than half way to the capital.

More details are emerging of Britain's preparations to send troops and personnel into Libya if necessary. Reuters is reporting that a diplomatic taskforce including Foreign Office officials is being readied to go into Benghazi and make contact with opposition leaders, along with a battalion of troops to aid humanitarian and evacuation efforts.

This is being cast as a fact-finding and the rebels will not given arms as an international embargo is in place, the government says. No one is saying when they will head in.

As we reported earlier, the troops involved are the Black Watch 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Reuters is saying that represents about 200 soldiers.

Protests demanding economic reforms by Oman's ruler have reached a key oil region, AP reports.

Workers have staged a sit-in at a main oil field in Haima, about 300 miles (500km) south-west of the capital, Muscat, demanding more state investments in the area, government officials have told the news agency.

The Times reports that continuing unrest in the Arab world could push the price of crude oil to US$250 and double the price of petrol to £2 a litre.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Saudi Arabia that the royal family has banned all protests and marches in a bid to curtail Shia protests in the oil-producing eastern provinces.

Security forces would use all measures to prevent any attempt to disrupt public order, according to Saudi state news channel al-Ekhbariya.

"The kingdom's regulations totally ban all sorts of demonstrations, marches, sit-ins," the interior ministry said in a statement, adding security forces would stop all attempts to disrupt public order.

The Independent reports that the Saudis have mobilised thousands of troops to quell growing unrest in the country's north-eastern Shia provinces.

Up to 35 of Gaddafi's tanks are approaching Zawiya, al-Jazeera reports.

Reuters reports that Gaddafi's forces have retreated from the centre of Zawiya but have encircled the city and set up checkpoints at the gates. Around 30 civilians were killed in the clashes on Saturday, according to the news agency.

"At least three rebels have been killed and many civilians. They [Gaddafi's forces] have bombed civilian cars trying to flee. Cars are still trying to evacuate the casualties," a doctor told Reuters.

"There is a lot of destruction in the city, I look around and all I see is destruction. Bombed buildings and burning cars everywhere – I cannot even count how many."

Another resident said the bodies of eight people had been taken to a mosque for burial.

In this Sky News audio report from Zawiyah, correspondent Alex Crawford says she has seen the bodies of half a dozen to a dozen pro-Gaddafi fighters killed in the fighting earlier today.

Listen!

The rebels also captured several government tanks, she adds.

The British government has confirmed that its troops are on standby for deployment to Libya.

The Black Watch 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland is ready to deploy at 24 hours' notice, according to the Ministry of Defence.

The troops are prepared to assist with humanitarian and evacuation operations but not combat, the MoD has stressed.

Reuters has more on how the revolt in Libya is affecting its oil production. The country is usually the world's 12th largest oil exporter but production has been slashed since the uprising against Gaddafi, which has seen rebels gain control of the east of the country – where most of the oil is produced.

Fierce fighting around oil installations, most recently in Ras Lanuf, has left many facilities standing idle or working at well below capacity.

The news agency reports that the offices of Harouge Oil Operations in Ras Lanuf were looted after being abandoned on Saturday.

"We have a right to these cars and more," one armed looter, Nasr al-Abdili, who was taking a pick-up truck, told Reuters. "Gaddafi stole from the people and now the people are taking it back."

An oil worker told the new agency that looters had "stolen more than 300 4x4s" and broken into offices. At another oil firm in the town, Libyan Emirates Oil Refining Company, concrete barricades had been put up across the entrance.

Oil sources told Reuters that Harrouge and another Ras Lanuf exporter have not been exporting for several days. The fall in production has led to spiralling oil prices.

Gaddafi has given a defiant interview to a Serbian TV channel in which he claimed "the Libyan people are fully behind me".

In the telephone interview with Pink TV, Gaddafi again denied the bombing of civilians, claiming: "The Arab media tried to bribe [the Serbs] to say that they bombed [the civilians]."

The Serbian government has been criticised for failing to join worldwide condemnation of Gaddafi's bloody crackdown. Serbia's defence ministry has rejected Arab media reports that Serb mercenaries flew Libyan jets that bombed protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi.

AP reports that it is "almost certain that some of the ammunition fired by Gaddafi's troops against pro-democracy protesters in Libya was made in Serbia, and that some of the air force pilots who targeted rebel-held positions were trained by Serbs".

The last batch of Chinese workers in Libya has been flown home, according to China Central Television. The plane carrying more than 300 Chinese workers arrived in the southern city of Guangzhou on Saturday, AP reports.

An estimated 30,000 Chinese were working in Libya, mostly in the construction and oil industries, before the revolt.

More on the westward advance of the rebel forces after capturing the oil town of Ras Lanuf from forces loyal to Gaddafi.

Rebel soldiers say they now control the small town of Bin Jawad, according to Reuters and AFP.

There are reports that opposition forces have advanced further east of Bin Jawad, which lies about 60km (38 miles) west of Ras Lanuf and 525km (330 miles) east of Tripoli.

"They're in Harawa, 12 to 15km after Bin Jawad. We're getting calls from there and people are coming back from there," Ghraib Anaizi, a civilian who is supporting the rebels, told Reuters.

The death toll from Friday's fighting around Ras Lanuf and Benghazi has reached 26 and could rise further, doctors have told the news agency.

A doctor at Martyrs' hospital in Benghazi, where most of those killed when pro-Gaddafi forces bombed an arms depot at Rajma were brought, put the death toll from that incident at 19 so far.

The bodies of 12 who died there were brought here and the other main Benghazi hospital has seven more dead.

The doctor added that he understood six more ambulances were on the way to the hospital with bodies.

Most of the dead were residents in houses that were close to the military base.

Ramadan Salem, a doctor at a hospital in Ajdabiya, another eastern rebel-held town, said eight dead had arrived from Ras Lanuf. Two were Gaddafi loyalists and six were rebels. There were also 25 injured.

Gaddafi has sent more troops towards Zawiyah in the wake of the rebels' successful defence of the city from an attack by his soldiers at dawn, al Jazeera reports.

Here's more on the fighting in the western city of Zawiyah, where rebels claim to have repelled a major assault by pro-Gaddafi forces. The battle, which began at dawn, could prove significant to the regime's defence of Tripoli, which lies 30 miles (50km) to the east.

"They entered Zawiyah at six in the morning with heavy forces, hundreds of soldiers with tanks. Our people fought back ... We have won for now and civilians are gathering in the square," Youssef Shagan, the rebel force spokesman in Zawiyah, told Reuters.

"We captured three APCs, two tanks and one pick-up after an hour and a half of fighting. A lot of civilians fled when the fighting started," he said, adding that there were government snipers in the town.

Another rebel fighter in central Zawiyah, the closest opposition-held city to Tripoli, told the news agency that Gaddafi's forces were regrouping at the entrance to the town after being pushed back on Saturday morning.

"Gaddafi will never enter this city. He will never set foot here. The only way for him to enter the city is when we are all dead. He has to kill us all to control the city," said the rebel, who gave his name as Ibrahim.

Earlier witnesses told AP that Gaddafi's forces had broken through rebel lines after heavy mortar shelling and machine gun fire, which damaged government buildings and homes.

They said snipers were shooting on sight anyone on the streets or residents who ventured out on their homes' balconies.

The witnesses added that rebels had retreated to positions further inside the city.

"We will fight them on the streets and will never give up so long as Gaddafi is still in power," one of the rebel fighters told the news agency.

Good morning, this is David Batty with Saturday's live coverage of the ongoing conflict in Libya where rebels and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are engaged in fierce fighting.

Here are the main developments overnight and this morning:

• Rebels in Zawiya, west of the capital, Tripoli, said they had repelled an attack by pro-Gaddafi troops. But the government forces said they had broken through the town's defences, forcing the rebels to retreat deeper inside the city.

Rebel fighters and defecting troops have captured the oil port town of Ras Lanouf and are in control of the town of Bin Jawad – about halfway between Tripoli and the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Libya has asked the United Nations to suspend sanctions that it imposed last month on Gaddafi and four of his aides in response to the violent crackdown.

• The opposition national council declared in Benghazi is about to meet for the first time. It will gather in secret for fear of the long reach of Gaddafi's forces, AFP reports.

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