Like snow in the desert, Libyan rebel fighters melt away

Ajdabiya was a ghost town today, with barely a person in sight, shops abandoned and the streets almost totally empty of vehicles.

"It is like we are living in Iraq, Afghanistan," Hamsa Mohrabi cried as he stood out in the street in his home town. "The war keeps coming. When we think it is over and safe to come back to our homes, it is not. Everybody has had to leave again. Everybody has fled."

He was speaking at the gate that marks Ajdabiya's western edge, where just a smattering of rebel fighters were gathered. All looked dirty and exhausted.

The town was liberated from Colonel Gaddafi's control on Saturday after his troops swarmed in 10 days earlier.

People had just returned to their homes, but now they have gone again.

They fled en masse last night as the regime's forces once again advanced, taking hundreds of miles of territory and forcing the rebels back so that all the gains of the previous few days were lost. Mr Mohrabi's family had piled their most precious possessions into their car and headed towards Benghazi. He remained to try to protect their home from looters. "Everyone is afraid," he said.

This morning the rebel force was massing east of Brega, 50 miles west of Ajdabiya, to try to hold back Gaddafi's troops. The fighters however, were clearly exhausted. Near the front line there were none of the cries of forthcoming victory that normally greet the sight of a reporter.

In recent days they have suffered regular shelling and have slept at the roadside, relying on whatever food the revolutionaries can get to them. One of the few trained military personnel visible, Lt-Col Ayman Said, insisted victory was still within their grasp. "The soldiers are tired but their morale is still good," he insisted. "These men now understand battle. They are learning how to fight."

But, in the words of the rebel spokesman Colonel Ahmed Bani, these men also dissolved in the face of the regime's advance "like snow in the desert".

The towns of Nawfaliyah, Bin Jawad and Ras Lanuf fell in quick succession to the lightning government counter-strike. Rebels showed no signs of trying to hold on to Brega, but carried on towards Ajdabiya. Further advances by Gaddafi troops were only stopped by an air strike yesterday evening.

Fear is now palpable among the civilian population, not only those left in Ajdabiya but also in Benghazi itself.

Rumours spread like wildfire. At one point messages started appearing on mobile phones warning that Gaddafi's forces were planning a sneak attack on the city at 3am. When the revolutionary administration blamed its recent setbacks on a brigade of fighters drawn from Chad's Revolutionary Guard, the news prompted renewed terror, as the prospect spread of African mercenaries rampaging through Benghazi.

The mercenaries had been issued, people insisted, with Viagra to ensure they could rape the city's women.

The rebel-controlled Voice of Free Libya responded with desperate appeals to find someone who knew how to drive the T-55 tanks seized earlier in the uprising from Gaddafi military stores.