Powerful explosions went off near an oil facility while loyalists of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi were raining artillery shells on rebel positions five kilometres (three miles) west of the town, AFP reporters said.

A rebel spokesman said oil installations were hit in the air raids, but Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said it was only a diesel storage facility that was struck.

A constant inferno of fierce flames could be seen at the foot of the cloud of black smoke near the As-Sidra facility and every few minutes another ball of flames shot up into the sky.

"I know for sure that what they blew up was an oil pipe. I know the whole line by heart," said Ali al-Aguri, an oil company mechanic who works at another plant further away.

Abdelhafez Ghoqa, spokesman for the rebel national council, said the "regime has concentrated its bombardments today on oil industry sites in Ras Lanuf. The oil wells have been bombarded, as well as oil installations."

"What worries us since the beginning and what has happened today is the bombardment of oil installations by the Kadhafi regime's artillery and warplanes," he added, reiterating the opposition call for the imposition of a no-fly zone by the international community.

But the head of NOC, Shukri Ghanem, said later that the As-Sidra explosion caused no damage to oil instrallations.

"Fortunately, the explosion today was in a small storage supply facility in Sidra... it has not affected the production," Ghanem said, adding, "It was diesel, it's not crude oil."

Amid scenes of chaos, dozens of vehicles packed with rebels streamed back from the fighting west of the town, accompanied by ambulances laden with casualties and with their sirens blaring, as a witness said the shelling was getting closer to Ras Lanuf.

The rebels -- lightly armed, largely inexperienced and not always entirely organised -- appear to have lost ground consistently since a government ambush forced them to retreat from Bin Jawad, west of Ras Lanuf, on Sunday.

Medics at Ras Lanuf hospital confirmed one dead and at least 30 wounded, many of them with superficial injuries and others more seriously.

"There's no God but Allah and the martyrs are beloved of Allah," shouted fighters at the small hospital in the Libyan town.

An AFP reporter saw one man brought out motionless from an ambulance, a bloodied keffiyeh draped over his face. Doctors crammed into the operating room, where there was blood on the floor and relatives tried to force their way in.

AFP reporters earlier saw warplanes carrying out air strikes and at least 20 shells falling near a rebel checkpoint west of Ras Lanuf.

One shell landed 30 metres (yards) from one AFP video journalist while others fell in the sea.

Rebels retaliated by firing some 40 Katyusha rockets from launchers mounted on two trucks as well as two anti-aircraft missiles.

One missile struck a telephone relay antenna some two kilometres away, while huge clouds of black smoke could be seen about 10 kilometres further west, suggesting they had hit a more distant target.

One of the rebels marked the moment by playing a revolutionary song full blast on a loudspeaker, with lyrics which said: "We will stay here until the pain is over," but the words soon turned sour.

"We had good weapons but we didn't know how to use them," Khalid al-Matbiri, a 20-year-old fighter with a rocket launcher over his shoulder, told AFP.

"Inshallah, we will win. We have God on our side," he added, saying the Kadhafi regime had killed both his grandfathers.

Both sides had started Wednesday dug into defensive positions between Ras Lanuf and government-held Bin Jawad.

Rebel colonel Masud Mohammed told reporters that government warplanes carried out four air strikes near Bin Jawad and conceded "heavy shelling" had already pushed back the rebels on Tuesday.

At the rebels' last checkpoint a letter from Muslim scholars was read aloud through a megaphone, urging the fighters to be disciplined.

"Follow orders, obey the commanders in the field, do not make chaotic movements," the letter read.

In Benghazi, Libya's second city and the rebels' headquarters, up to 1,000 people, largely women, demonstrated on the sea front Wednesday holding up Libyan flags and chanting "the blood of the martyrs won't be spilled in vain".

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