Al Jazeera's Hoda-Abdel Hamid, on the road leading east from Ras Lanuf, reported that explosions had also occured in that town on Tuesday, which opposition freedom fighters had earlier retreated to from Bin Jawad. "So certainly what we can say at this stage is that Bin Jawad is not any more in the hands of the freedom figters, actually the Gaddafi forces now are managing to pound Ras Lanuf and are getting closer and closer to them, pushing the opposition freedom fighters eastwards more and more," she said.
"I think this is an exact repeat of what happened about three weeks ago."Pro-Gaddafi forces were mostly using mortars and artillery, as opposed to the tanks and airstrikes of early advances, she said
"The Gaddafi guys hit us with Grads [rockets] and they came round our flanks," Ashraf Mohammed, a 28-year-old freedom fighter wearing a bandolier of bullets, told a reporter from the Reuters news agency at the front.
Also on Tuesday, several explosions were heard in the capital, Tripoli, but it was unclear as to where exactly they occured.
The Pentagon said that international forces had launched 22 Tomahawk cruise missiles and flew 115 strike sorties over Libya in the last 24 hours.
The reversal for Libya's nascent opposition came after their forces had made a speedy, two-day advance from Ajdabiya. So currently both parties are finding it difficult to hold on to the land they have taken control of as things shifts in both directions with in short periods of time.
