Libya's new rulers are on the verge of claiming full control of Muammar Gaddafi's hometown Sirte after seizing its showpiece conference centre and university from his diehards.
In their advance, fighters of the National Transitional Council (NTC) also seized control of the Mediterranean town's hospital and university campus.
The fortress-like Ouagadougou conference centre, constructed to host pan-African summits, has been a major objective of the NTC forces since they launched a September 15 offensive on the city.
"We control 100 per cent of the Ouagadougou centre," Mohammed al-Fayad, an NTC military chief, said on Sunday.
He said the capture "opens the way" for his forces to overrun the city centre.
"It is only a question of co-ordination between (Misrata fighters on) the western front and (Benghazi fighters on) the eastern front. We just need time."
As he spoke, NTC fighters spread throughout the sprawling complex, tearing down portraits of the fugitive Gaddafi and the green flags of his fallen 42-year regime.
They later advanced another kilometre north along streets littered with debris and lined by pock-marked buildings towards the heart of the city.
At the war-ravaged centre, giant windows were all blasted in and its metal roof had caved in under the artillery barrage.
"All this was built with the money of Libyans. It's our money and yet no resident of Sirte was allowed to come here," said one fighter, sitting back on a sofa.
NTC fighters also took control of the town's Ibn Sina hospital, whose upper floors were all blasted.
Patients' beds lined ground floor corridors at the hospital. Some were unconscious and some with horrible injuries, most of them young men.
a doctor, Nabil Lamine, said: "It was a holocaust, not a hospital. We had no drugs, no oxygen. We brought people from the upper floors to the corridor on the ground because of the shelling."
A day after taking a four-lane avenue into the centre, the NTC forces also took control of Sirte's university and its new campus, a huge site where Gaddafi snipers had been picking them off from unfinished buildings.
"We have taken the university ... We have liberated the area from Gaddafi's dogs," NTC commander Nasser Zamud said, as hundreds of his fighters roamed the campus.
At a Gaddafi palace about 500 metres from Ibn Sina, partly destroyed by NATO air raids according to the NTC fighters, a group of men jumped up and down on a four-poster bed.
Despite the celebrations, the NTC's battle for Sirte has come at a heavy cost.
The ferocity of the Gaddafi forces' resistance in Sirte and their other main bastion, Bani Walid, has surprised the new regime, with NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil admitting the battle was "very vicious".
Medics say 23 NTC fighters have been killed and almost 330 wounded since Friday, when they launched what they have been calling their final assault on Sirte.
Thousands of civilians were still trapped in the city, and NTC commanders said they have been pacing their advance to evacuate some of those who had not fled and to avoid losses from friendly fire.
NTC commanders believe one of Gaddafi's sons, Mutassim, is holed up in Sirte and another, Seif al-Islam, once seen as the former strongman's successor, is hiding in Bani Walid, possibly with his father.
New regime fighters have been stationed for weeks outside Bani Walid, an oasis 170km southeast of Tripoli.
On Sunday they took control of the town's airport.
