Civilians and rebels fled Ajdabiya in their thousands yesterday on rumours that Colonel Muamar Qaddafi's forces were charging towards the key eastern town, witnesses said.
Families packed into cars and trucks joined rebel military vehicles - pickups loaded with rocket launchers and machine guns - in a stampede north-east towards the rebel bastion Benghazi, some 160 kilometres away.
Rebels seized Ajdabiya on March 26, a week after coalition forces, through air strikes and cruise missiles and acting under a UN mandate to protect civilians in Libya, beat Colonel Qaddafi's forces back from the gates of Benghazi.
After coming within 60 kilometres of Colonel Qaddafi's hometown of Sirte on March 28, the rebels have since been steadily pushed back almost 400 kilometres by the superior firepower of Colonel Qaddafi's forces, despite the coalition air strikes.
In a bid to quell disarray among the rebels and international forces, the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, confirmed yesterday that an international contact group on Libya will meet on April 13 in Doha with the goal of "ensuring the political governance of the military intervention and the implementation of United Nations resolutions".
Mr Juppé urged the African Union and the rebel's Transitional National Council to join the United Nations and Nato in providing leadership and an overall political direction to the international effort.
An earlier meeting of the contact group in London saw more than 40 countries and organisations gather to thrash out an international response to the Libya crisis.
Nato yesterday dismissed Libyan claims that Britain had struck the North African country's largest oilfield, blaming Colonel Qaddafi's forces for the attacks that halted production. The eastern Sarir and Messla fields came under fire just as the rebels had sold their first oil cargo in weeks.
The Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker that can transport up to 1 million barrels of oil, left the eastern port of Tobruk late Wednesday en route to Singapore, oil and shipping officials said. The shipment, the first since Qatar said it would market their oil, marks a milestone for the officials in Benghazi who have been steadily courting the international community in a bid to win firmer backing in their fight against Colonel Qaddafi.
Their hopes for continued exports, at least in the short-term, were dealt a blow after the attacks on the 12-billion barrel Sarir field, the country's largest, and the 3-billion barrel Messla field, forced a halt in production. The two fields are in the massive Sirte Basin region, which holds roughly 80 per cent of Libya's 46.4 billion in proven reserves of conventional crude oil. The rebels blamed Colonel Qaddafi's supporters, citing three days of attacks on the opposition-held fields. Libya denied the allegation. Deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim told reporters late Wednesday that "British war planes" struck Sarir, killing three guards and wounding other workers while also damaging field equipment and an oil pipeline. He did not say how many workers were wounded. He also did not say why he specified Britain, which is part of the Nato air campaign.
Nato said it had been monitoring the Sarir oilfields over the past week and that attacks by pro-Qaddafi forces had resulted in a number of skirmishes and at least one fire at an oil facility.
The Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, who commands the allied operation, says: "We are aware that pro-Qaddafi forces have attacked this area in recent days. To try and blame it on Nato shows how desperate this regime is."
Qatar has agreed to help market Libya's oil, with the funds most likely to be placed in an escrow account, according to analysts. The profits would be used to buy food, medicine and other supplies. But it was unclear if the Gulf nation had played a role in the oil shipment that left Tobruk on Wednesday.
Michelle Wiese Bockmann, markets editor for the shipping publication Lloyd's List in London, said satellite data make clear the tanker was loaded while in Tobruk. She said it is headed for Singapore, a destination that a Gulf-based industry executive also confirmed.
"There are extreme commercial sensitivities attached to this shipment," she said. The Gulf-based oil executive said the oil may either be processed in a refinery in Singapore, or may be taken to China.
