Rebels Battle Gaddafi Forces Across Libya

Fighting is raging between Colonel Muammar Gaddafi forces and rebels across swathes of western Libya with dozens said to be killed, local reports say.

Anti-Gaddafi fighters launched an offensive in the port of Zawiyah to the west of the capital,Tripoli, on Saturday - months after they were forced out by regime troops.

Battles have also flared in the rebel-held city of Zintan in the Berber mountains, as well as in nearby Yafran and at Dafnia near Misratah, rebel sources said.

Six Libyan rebel fighters reportedly died when they were hit by a government artillery barrage near Misratah on Sunday.

This follows the death of 31 people in the city on Friday.

In the Zawiyah battle, which continued for a second day on Sunday, 13 fighters and civilians, including a seven-year-old boy, are said to have been killed.

"Fierce fighting is taking place now. The (government) brigades have been receiving reinforcements, their number is increasing," a rebel spokesman, who gave his name as Ibrahim, said.

"There are many snipers on rooftops of buildings and mosques. They are the main threat to the residents."

Zawiyah, about 30 miles (50km) west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the beginning of the Libyan conflict .

But the latest clashes follows more than two months of relative calm in the city of 250,000 people.

The fresh wave of fighting comes as Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News that Col Gaddafi's regime was "weakening all the time" in the face of Nato's military campaign.

But he said it was "impossible to say" how long it would take to unseat the dictator.

Mr Hague also said he would prefer for Gaddafi to be charged with crimes against humanity, rather than be killed in an airstrike or exiled.

"Time is on our side, not on his side. The position of the Gaddafi regime is weakening all the time," he said.

He added: "We will have the staying power to implement the UN resolution and see this through to success."