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ZAWIYAH, Libya, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Moammar Gadhafi is preparing to leave Libya, possibly for exile in Tunisia, NBC News reported Thursday. Citing U.S. officials, NBC said intelligence reports indicate Gadhafi is preparing to leave Libya with his family, possibly within days.
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The report comes during a week in which U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told an audience in Washington, "I think the sense is that Gadhafi's days are numbered."
Libyan rebels seized the last working oil refinery in Libya Thursday and fought for complete control of the port, 30 miles from the capital, rebel leaders said.
Many of the soldiers defending the refinery in Zawiyah for the government of Moammar Gadhafi appeared to have deserted, The New York Times reported. The newspaper said the area was dotted with green army uniforms.
Some pockets of resistance remained in the city, rebels said. Rebel soldiers built earthworks around the refinery, the last working one in Libya, in case government forces tried to retake it.
The battle for the 120,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Zawiyah could be decisive in determining whether the rebels win control of the strategic Mediterranean coast city 30 miles west of Tripoli -- on a vital route between the capital and the Tunisian border -- and are able to tighten a noose around the Libyan capital, Britain's The Daily Telegraph reported.
Zawiyah has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the Libyan uprising, with Gadhafi forces reported to have used air power and tanks to all but destroy the city of more than 90,000. Children were reported shot while sitting in front of their homes.
Rebel field commanders told their troops it was important not to damage the oil infrastructure in battle because the refinery will be crucial to establishing a functioning oil system, the Telegraph reported.
More than 100 Gadhafi loyalists stationed at the refinery fought about 200 rebel soldiers from inside pipelines, ports and storage tanks as well as other vital areas to force refinery damage in the battle, the opposition and witnesses said.
Salwa Ahmed, a resident of the refinery managers' residential complex, told the Telegraph she was fleeing because "the Gadhafi forces show no sign of backing down."
"It will not be safe," she said.
About 2,000 families from Zawiyah and other cities near the fighting passed through a rebel checkpoint Wednesday, rebel officials registering the names told the Times.
Gadhafi troops controlled a key hospital just east of the city on the road to Tripoli, with government snipers firing from the roof and doctors unable to enter or leave the hospital, Britain's The Guardian reported.
