Rebels, gov't troops battle at Port Brega

TRIPOLI, Libya, July 19 (UPI) -- Libyan rebels and government troops battled around Port Brega Tuesday, with rebel fighters describing the fighting as fierce.

"It's a gang fight in there today," Omar Rafa Eisa, a 26-year-old rebel fighter at a checkpoint near Ajdabiya, told the Los Angeles Times.

The rebels tried to advance on the key port city but were kept at bay by rocket fire from forces loyal to Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the Times said.

The day's fighting left at least eight rebels dead and 45 others wounded, Said Mogarbi, who monitors casualties at the main hospital in Ajdabiya, told the Times. At least 32 rebels had died and 291 others had been wounded since the assault on Port Brega began Thursday.

A government spokesman said 30 pro-Gadhafi soldiers had died.

The newspaper said NATO has increased its airstrikes near Port Brega in recent days.

The only way to end the Libyan crisis is for Gadhafi to step down, the U.S. State Department said American envoys told members of Gadhafi's inner circle this past weekend.

"This was not a negotiation. It was the delivery of a message," a State Department official told The Daily Telegraph of London following a meeting between three senior U.S. diplomats and four Gadhafi regime members.

"We have no plans to meet again because the message has been delivered," she said.

The Saturday meeting in Tunisia was the first acknowledged contact with the Gadhafi regime since the 17-nation U.N.-supported military campaign started in March. It came a day after Washington and other military-intervention supporters agreed to recognize the rebel Transitional National Council as Libya's sole legitimate government.

Gadhafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the embattled regime saw the U.S. meeting as "a first step and we want to take further steps."

"We don't want to be stuck in the past -- we want to move forward all the time," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The U.S. delegates, including Jeffrey Feltman, the top State Department official in charge of Middle East policy, gave Gadhafi's advisers "a clear and firm message that the only way to move forward is for Gadhafi to step down," the State Department official said.