"It's your turn, it's your turn," the opposition fighters had shouted just moments before, thinking they had completely repulsed a regime counter-attack on the strategic eastern oil port of Brega.

Determined to end the Libyan leader's four decades of brutal rule, nerves ran high among the rebels on Wednesday, in contrast to the confidence of days ago.

In what could prove a key battle in the uprising against Kadhafi, rebels armed with rocket launchers were forced to fight off reported hired guns looking to retake the westernmost rebel-held town in Libya.

It was a long day of seesawing fortunes that began at sunrise when Kadhafi's forces attacked the Sirte Oil Company compound.

"They came at 6:30 am and shot the people guarding the gate. When I heard the fire, I climbed up the (fertiliser) tower. I saw everything," Khalid al-Quafi, who works at the compound, told AFP.

"They killed the two people at the gate, the two of them young boys. After 45 minutes, they left the compound."

Before long Kadhafi's loyalists, apparently backed by Chadian mercenaries, had stormed into the town, capturing the area around the compound, the airport and the university.

But more than two weeks after opposition forces seized most of eastern Libya in a bid to topple Kadhafi after 41 years of iron-fisted rule, the rebels were not giving up without a fight.

As news of the attack filtered out, up to 40 pick-up trucks sped west towards Brega, packed with revolution volunteers from a barracks in Benghazi, the main eastern city and cradle of the uprising, some 140 (115 miles) away.

"I left my five-year-old daughter in Benghazi and I came with my husband. I lived in Brega for twenty years and won't abandon it," said Sayida Iman, 45, who cradled a gun as her husband drove towards Brega to fight.

While Kadhafi's forces unleashed air power and heavy weapons on the town, some of the rebels appeared pitifully lightly armed.

At a petrol station outside Brega one man with a machete and another with a metal skewer flashed victory signs on the desert highway.

But by mid-afternoon the rebels said they were surrounding regime fighters who were in the university area and at the oil company. Smoke rose from shell fire and heavy machine-gun fire rattled through Brega.

Explosions and plumes of smoke could be seen hundreds of metres away from a highway along the glistening Mediterranean.

"Now they're limited to the university and the gates of the oil company. Their ammunition is running out. They're firing randomly. We'll take these positions by nightfall," said one rebel fighter who gave his name as Mohammed.

Nightfall brought victory celebrations as the rebels said Kadhafi's men had abandoned their last stronghold near the university.

Rebel fighter Khalid al-Aqoly, carrying a machine gun, told AFP: "Brega is liberated. We have forced them to 30 kilometres west."

Outside the university, there was little visible damage from the clashes but bullet casings and heavy machine-gun cartridges littered the street and where Kadhafi militia positions had been.

But Kadhafi's forces had not finished yet.

Moments after the rebel fighters had gathered in a square near the university the warplane launched its two missiles. The blasts caused no casualties but gouged out two craters 15 to 20 metres away.

Rebels chanting "Allahu Akhbar" (God is greatest) ducked for cover and then started firing machine guns at the jet. Others picked up missile parts and posed for pictures.

"What type of person would do that? A fighter jet against a crowd of people?" said Muftah, a young man who parked his car down the road to join the celebration as dissidents fired celebratory shots in the air from car windows.

"They're wasting ammunition. They are going need that," muttered a passer-by, shaking his head.

Meanwhile the mounting toll of the insurrection -- already put at 6,000 by one Libyan rights group -- could be seen all too vividly in Brega's hospitals.

The bodies of at least eight men lay in two morgues. One of them had part of his face blown off, apparently by heavy weaponry.

earlier related report
French navy sending helicopter carrier to Libya
Paris (AFP) March 2, 2011 - France is sending its second-largest warship, the helicopter carrier Mistral, to waters off Libya to help evacuate refugees from the conflict there, its defence ministry said Wednesday.

A spokesman said the Mistral would take part in a European Union-led plan to repatriate thousands of Egyptian guest workers who are flooding out of Libya to escape fighting between strongman Moamer Kadhafi's troops and rebels.

Colonel Thierry Burkhard said the Mistral was off Portugal and would reach the Mediterranean on Thursday, after which it would visit the French port of Toulon before heading to Libya escorted by the frigate Georges-Leygues.

Between them the two ships could carry 800 refugees, he added.

The 21,600-tonne Mistral can operate as a command ship and as an amphibious assault vessel. It is equipped with a 69-bed hospital and can carry up to 450 commandos as well as 16 helicopters, 13 main battle tanks and other vehicles.

With the exception of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle -- currently on duty in the Arabian Sea supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan -- the Mistral is the largest vessel in the French navy.

The ship was involved in a previous Mediterranean refugee crisis in 2006 when it was used to evacuate to Cyprus 4,700 civilians from Beirut who were trapped in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

France said it would take part in international efforts to relieve a refugee exodus threatening to turn into a humanitarian crisis on Libya's borders, but it would not take direct military action inside Libya without a UN mandate.

The foreign ministry said Wednesday that France would send heavy-lift planes as well as the ships to create a land and sea bridge to ferry 5,000 Egyptian refugees fleeing Libya home from the Tunisian border.

Amid bloody clashes between Kadhafi's forces and anti-regime rebels, spokesman Bernard Valero said Paris was also seeking ways "to send tents and emergency supplies to vulnerable people who have not yet left Libya."

France's initial focus, however, will be on the situation on Libya's border with Tunisia, where tens of thousands of refugees are attempting to cross, and in particular to help stranded Egyptian workers to get home.

"With rotations by heavy-lift planes on the one hand, and a naval transport ship that will soon be in the zone on the other, we ought to be able to move at least 5,000 people in under a week," Valero said.

"France decided on March 1 to assist, by air and sea means, in the evacuation to Egypt of Egyptian workers seeking refuge on the Tunisia-Libya border," he told reporters.

"This action, carried out in coordination with the European Union, responds to international appeals launched by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and by Egypt," he said.

"It is also a means to help Tunisia, which is facing a refugee influx."

More than 170,000 people have fled Libya since the uprising began just over two weeks ago, of which 75,000 headed to Tunisia, 63,000 to Egypt and 800 to Niger, Valero said, citing UN estimates.

He said that the High Commissioner had warned that the situation on the Libyan-Tunisian frontier is "becoming particularly critical."

Separately, a Libyan human rights group alleged that 6,000 people had already been killed in the two-week-old conflict and accused Kadhafi of shoring up his rule with thousands of African mercenaries led by two Chadian generals.

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