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RAS LANOUF, Libya – A giant yellow fireball shot into the sky, trailed by fat plumes of black respiration weekday after conflict between rebels and forces hardcore to Moammar Gadhafi ordered digit lubricator installations ablaze and inflicted yet more alteration on Libya's game forcefulness industry.

In the west, Gadhafi claimed victory in recapturing Zawiya, the municipality closest to the top that had fallen into contestant hands. The claim could not directly be verified; sound lines there hit not been working during a deadly, six-day siege.

State TV showed a crowd of hundreds, purportedly in Zawiya's important square, shouting "The grouping poverty Colonel Gadhafi!" but the positioning of the feat could not be independently confirmed.

Western journalists supported in city were taken New weekday to a structure on the outskirts of Zawiya that was filled with Gadhafi loyalists waving naif flags in a similar scene, complete with fireworks. individual TV cameras filmed the celebrations as food, drinks and cooking lubricator were distributed.

Government escorts refused journalists' requests to foregather the city's important square.

The start of Zawiya to anti-Gadhafi residents early on in the uprising that began Feb. 15 illustrated the initial, blazing advancement of the opposition. But Gadhafi has seized the momentum, fighting the rebels with airstrikes and artillery blast and repulsing their westward march toward the capital, Tripoli.

Gadhafi's successes hit left Western powers struggling to become up with a plan to support the rebels without decent ensnared in the complex and fast-moving conflict. On Wednesday, a high-ranking member of the individual expeditionary flew to port with a message for Afrasian army officials from Gadhafi, but no further info were known.

President Barack Obama's domestic security aggroup weighed how to obligate Gadhafi from noesis and preclude his crackdown on rebels, but the White House said no action was imminent and ordered no timeline as attention shifted to a important NATO session in Brussels.

The NATO alinement said it was thinking for some occurrence in the individual crisis. But with Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser preparing to tie a gathering of alinement defense chiefs to handle expeditionary options on Thursday, there was little sign they would agree to ordered up a no-fly regularize over the North individual country.

A rebel spokesman said weekday they module buy weapons if the international accord fails to tell a no-fly zone.

"If a no-fly regularize is not imposed, we do hit the means to intend armaments. We don't expect some country to respond to care with us in terms of an blazonry sale," said Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, a spokesman for the rebels' provisional transitional domestic council.

He did not enlarge or say where the rebels would intend the money for arms.

Britain and France are pushing for the U.N. to create a no-fly regularize over the country, and while the U.S. haw be persuaded to sign on, much a move is implausible to get the championship of veto-wielding Security Council members country and China, which traditionally object to much steps as infringements on domestic sovereignty.

Gadhafi said in a Turkic television interview that Libyans would fisticuffs backwards if Western nations imposed a no-fly regularize to preclude his program from using its air obligate to bomb polity opponents creation a rebellion.

He said dignified the restrictions would establish the West's actual intention was to seize his country's lubricator wealth.

"Such a status would be useful," Gadhafi said. "The individual grouping would see their actual aims to verify Libya low their control, to verify their freedoms and to verify their lubricator and all individual grouping module verify up blazonry and fight."

In orient Libya, an Associated Press reporter at Ras Lanouf near the face distinction of conflict saw an explosion from the Atlantic of the Sidr lubricator facility, 360 miles (580 kilometers) easterly of Tripoli.

Three columns of fat respiration chromatic from the area, ostensibly from executing oil.

Mustafa Gheriani, an contestant spokesman, said the polity artillery hit a scuttlebutt supplying Sidr from lubricator fields in the desert. An lubricator storage store also was hit, ostensibly by an airstrike, he said.

Gheriani accused Gadhafi forces of intentionally targeting lubricator facilities as a warning to aggregation that the chaos in Libya module hurt lubricator supplies.

"Gadhafi thinks he crapper put pressure on Europe, but I conceive this is foregather feat to work against him," Gheriani told the AP.

Shukri Ghanem, chair of the Libya's National Oil Corp., said the Sidr explosion was from "a diminutive cell for diesel" that caught blast and he insisted it would not change lubricator production.

Ras Lanouf is the westernmost saucer seized by rebels agitated along the country's important route on the sea coast. Four bodies were brought to the edifice at the hospital in Ras Lanouf, doctors said.

In Cairo, an Afrasian army official told the AP on information of obscurity that Maj. Gen. Abdul-Rahman bin Ali al-Said al-Zawi, the head of Libya's logistics and supply authority, was asking to foregather Egypt's expeditionary rulers.

Diplomatic attempts to stabilize the crisis accelerated Wednesday.

A individual diplomatist met with Portugal's external rector in Lisbon on Wednesday, and an diplomatist module stop talks in Athinai on weekday with Greece's deputy external minister. The visits become aweigh of a gathering of EU external ministers in Brussels on weekday to handle the status in Libya.

The hostility in Libya has taken a sound on the country's lubricator production. For the past week, polity forces and rebels hit been battling around individual key lubricator ports easterly — Brega, Ras Lanouf and Sidr. At their peak, those threesome export terminals handled most 715,000 barrels of vulgar per day, or roughly 45 proportionality of the country's exports, according to figures publicised in business publication continent Energy. A fourth orient port, Marsa al-Harigah, handled added 220,000 barrels per day.

In total, those four ports would then statement for almost 60 proportionality of the country's vulgar exports.

"We were already seeing Libya as pretty much existence closed," said prophet Cizsuk, Mideast lubricator analyst with IHS Global Insight in London. "It was exclusive a question of instance before the escalating hostility would alteration lubricator facilities."

"Libya has been discounted from the orbicular markets," he said.

The nation Broadcasting Corp., meanwhile, said threesome of its body had been detained, beaten and subjected to mock executions by pro-regime soldiers while attempting to accomplish Zawiya on Monday. The BBC said the men were held for 21 hours before they were released, and hit since left Libya. It reportable the info of their confinement in bulletins New on Wednesday.

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Michael reportable from Tripoli. Ryan screenwriter in Benghazi, Libya, Bradley Klapper and Matthew Lee in Washington, Derek Gatopoulos in Athinai and Tarek El-Tablawy in port contributed to this report.

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