Anti-Gaddafi forces have urged NATO to intensify its air war as they took heavy losses in a push on the ousted despot's birthplace of Sirte and his other remaining bastion, Bani Walid.
In a radio message on Wednesday, meanwhile, Muammar Gaddafi hailed the resistance put up in Bani Walid, where the National Transitional Council (NTC) said 11 of its fighters were killed on Tuesday in a hail of rockets fired by forces loyal to the former strongman.
Among those killed in the barrage was senior commander Daou al-Salhine al-Jadak, whose car was struck by a rocket as he headed towards the front late in the day, NTC chief negotiator Abdullah Kenshil told AFP.
Jadak, one of the highest ranking NTC commanders in Bani Walid who hailed from the town itself, told AFP two days before his death that he had been imprisoned for more than 18 years for helping organise a 1993 rebellion.
An AFP correspondent said that despite heavy use of tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, the NTC forces had not advanced from positions held for the past few days in the desert town 170 kilometres southeast of Tripoli.
"There is always incoming missile and artillery fire. We are returning fire with heavy weapons but we are not sending in infantry. We are waiting for reinforcements," said field commander Captain Walid Khaimej.
"NATO is here but is not doing enough. They take out the rocket launchers firing at us, but they are immediately replaced. We need more help from NATO," he told AFP.
The military alliance has giving air support under a UN mandate been to a popular revolt against Gaddafi that erupted in February and forced the former strongman out of Tripoli and into hiding last month.
It has scaled down the intensity of its strikes, saying in operational updates that it has taken out targets in Bani Walid on just one of the past three days.
NATO said on Wednesday that it made only one key hit anywhere in Libya the day before, when it struck an ammunition and vehicle storage facility in Sirte.
On the front in Bani Walid, exhausted fighters said they were desperate for support.
"We need more firepower, more artillery, more tanks. The infantry cannot move in because whoever tries gets taken out," said Ahmed Hamza, a 22-year-old who had been studying in Scotland before returning to Libya to fight for the NTC.
"What we really need is more strikes from NATO. NATO is only hitting once or twice or day. That's not enough," Hamza said.
The NTC's losses were almost as bad in Sirte, where its fighters are battling their way to the heart of the sprawling Mediterranean city, site of a Gaddafi compound and bunkers.
"More than 10 of our fighters have been killed (on Tuesday) in face-to-face fighting near Mahari Hotel," said a commander who asked not to be named.
NTC fighters and Gaddafi diehards clashed "in street fights and shot at each other from close range with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades," he said.
At a field hospital east of the city, Dr Yusuf al-Badri said NTC casualties mounted after "a very bad day" on Tuesday when eight of them were killed and almost 50 wounded.
"One fighter was killed today and five wounded so far," he told AFP.
On Sirte's western front, there was a barrage of mortar, rocket and tank fire mid-morning, but the NTC fighters said they had no orders to go into the city on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, they captured Sirte's port, marking a key victory in the battle for control of the city.
But they expected a ferocious fight for control of the compound, the nerve centre of the remaining resistance, where some of Gaddafi's family are thought to be holed up.
One fighter said that unlike the NTC forces, the Gaddafi loyalists were using heavy weapons and that members of the deposed despot's family were inside the city, although he did not give names.
Thousands of fearful civilians have been fleeing Sirte, 360 kilometres east of Tripoli, as the new regime's forces close in from the east, south and west.
NATO said the plight of civilians is worsening by the day in Sirte and Bani Walid, with supplies running short and snipers preventing escape.
The populations of the two Gaddafi strongholds are "under enormous pressure" with access to drinking water, food, electricity, medicine and fuel "severely impeded," an alliance spokesman said.
"Media, eyewitness accounts and intelligence reports reveal the worsening situation in these two towns," Colonel Roland Lavoie said in Brussels.
In Gaddafi's radio message, a transcript of which was carried by a loyalist website on Tuesday, he said he was still fighting and was ready to die a martyr.
"Heroes have resisted and fallen as martyrs and we too are awaiting martyrdom," Gaddafi said.
He praised the fierce resistance put up in Bani Walid, which had been a major recruiting ground for his elite army units.
"You should know that I am on the ground with you," he said. "Through your jihad, you are imitating the exploits of your ancestors."
