Libyan forces storm Gaddafi home town

The forces of Libya's new regime stormed into two key towns today - including Colonel Gaddafi's birthplace - as they tried to finish off resistance from his die-hard supporters.

On the outskirts of Sirte, the dictator's home town on the Mediterranean coast, tanks and scores of trucks mounted with heavy machineguns, and up to 4,000 troops, advanced.

Explosions, rapid gunfire and the scream of rockets came from the centre of the town as black smoke curled in the sky. Nato planes roared overhead.

Intelligence suggested the deposed dictator was hiding in Sirte.

At Bani Walid, south-east of Tripoli, anti-Gaddafi fighters moved forward under mortar, rocket and sniper fire, going from house to house and sheltering behind walls as shrapnel and bullets flew. The new leadership, the National Transitional Council, said its troops took a valley leading to the centre, but the defence was ferocious.

Four weeks after rebels, backed by a Nato air campaign, overran Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi, 69, still commands loyalty from hundreds of armed men at least in a triangle of land between Sirte, Bani Walid and Sabha in the south. The NTC is desperate to capture his last bastions.

Abdulrahman Busin, NTC military spokesman, said of Sirte: "There was a co-ordinated push from south, east and west and along the coast. [We] are under heavy fire. There is a particular problem with snipers."

Mohammed, a 23-year-old fighter from Misrata, said Gaddafi troops "have got heavy weapons ... We are regrouping, pulling back, hitting them with heavy weapons and then advancing again." Al Jazeera TV claimed NTC forces had taken Sirte's airport.

To the west, truckloads of NTC fighters shouted "Let's go! Bani Walid!" as columns of pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns advanced on the town. "We are going in," Mohammed Ahmed said, his rifle sticking out of his car window. "God is greatest. God willing, Bani Walid will be free today." Colonel Gaddafi's spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told Syrian-based Arrai TV his leader had thousands of supporters. The station said 16 people had been killed in Sirte as a result of Nato bombing. Nato dismissed the claims and said it had struck military targets, including a tank and several missile systems.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Tripoli today, 24 hours after the visit by David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy.