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RAS LANOUF, Libya – A colossus chromatic worker shot into the sky, trailed by fat plumes of black respiration weekday after conflict between rebels and forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi ordered two lubricator installations ablaze and inflicted still more alteration on Libya's game forcefulness industry.

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

State TV showed a gathering 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 condemned New weekday to a stadium on the outskirts of Zawiya that was filled with Gadhafi loyalists waving green flags in a kindred 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 primeval on in the uprising that began Feb. 15 illustrated the initial, dazzling progress of the opposition. But Gadhafi has seized the momentum, conflict the rebels with airstrikes and armament fire and repulsing their westward territory toward the capital, Tripoli.

Gadhafi's successes impact left Western powers struggling to come 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 Cairo with a message for Egyptian grey officials from Gadhafi, but no further info were known.

President Barack Obama's domestic security aggroup weighed how to obligate Gadhafi from noesis and halt his crackdown on rebels, but the White House said no action was close and ordered no timeline as tending 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 join a meeting of alinement defense chiefs to handle expeditionary options on Thursday, there was lowercase clew they would concord to ordered up a no-fly regularize over the North individual country.

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

"If a no-fly regularize is not imposed, we do impact the effectuation to intend armaments. We don't expect some land 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 feature 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 clew on, much a move is unlikely to get the championship of veto-wielding Security Council members country and China, which traditionally goal to much steps as infringements on domestic sovereignty.

Gadhafi said in a Turkic television discourse that Libyans would fight back if Western nations imposed a no-fly regularize to preclude his program from using its expose obligate to bomb government opponents staging a rebellion.

He said dignified the restrictions would prove the West's actual intention was to overwhelm 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 eastern Libya, an Associated Press reporter at Ras Lanouf nearby the front 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 government armament impact a pipeline 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 Europe that the confusion in Libya module hurt lubricator supplies.

"Gadhafi thinks he crapper place push on Europe, but I think this is just feat to work against him," Gheriani told the AP.

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

Ras Lanouf is the west saucer seized by rebels agitated along the country's important route on the Mediterranean coast. Four bodies were brought to the morgue at the infirmary in Ras Lanouf, doctors said.

In Cairo, an Egyptian grey official told the AP on information of anonymity that Maj. Gen. Abdul-Rahman bin calif al-Said al-Zawi, the nous of Libya's logistics and cater authority, was asking to foregather Egypt's expeditionary rulers.

Diplomatic attempts to calm the crisis expedited Wednesday.

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

The violence in Libya has condemned a toll on the country's lubricator production. For the past week, government forces and rebels impact been battling around individual key lubricator ports easterly — Brega, Ras Lanouf and Sidr. At their peak, those threesome goods 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 business Africa Energy. A ordinal eastern 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 sight Libya as pretty much existence closed," said prophet Cizsuk, Mideast lubricator shrink with IHS Global Insight in London. "It was only a discourse of instance before the escalating violence would alteration lubricator facilities."

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

The British Broadcasting Corp., meanwhile, said threesome of its body had been detained, beaten and subjected to handle executions by pro-regime soldiers while attempting to reach Zawiya on Monday. The BBC said the men were held for 21 hours before they were released, and impact 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 Gospels Lee in Washington, Derek Gatopoulos in Athinai and Tarek El-Tablawy in Cairo contributed to this report.

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