Aziz Issa, a hospital spokesman in Misrata, east of Tripoli, said 115 fighters had been killed and 300 wounded in the anti-ISIS assault since mid-May.
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Some extremists reportedly shaved off their beards to escape while the pro-government fighters, mostly from the western Libyan city of Misurata, pushed into the city centre in their tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.
The US military said a second American naval group led by the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower was nearing the Mediterranean to support anti-IS operations.
“We think that Sirte will be liberated within days, not weeks”, said military spokesman Mohamed al-Gasri. “The Daesh (IS) snipers are a concern to us because they shoot from long distances and that has hindered us in the battle inside the city”, he said. That prompted the GNA on Thursday to call for global medical aid for “our heroes”.
The brigades, who are based in the western city of Misrata, launched their counter-offensive against Islamic State last month, pushing the militants back along the coastal road to the west of Sirte and saying they meant to recapture the city. It also seized about 250 km (155 miles) of Mediterranean coastline either side of Sirte.
Libya spiraled into chaos after longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi was ousted and killed in October 2011, with two governments vying for power and armed groups battling to control vast energy resources.
Both the PFG and key armed groups from Misrata have pledged to support it.
Pentagon officials anticipate the city will fall under the government’s control within days, Col. Chris Garver, the top USA military spokesman for anti-Islamic State operations, said Wednesday.
“We haven’t made any additional decisions about U.S. action at this point”.
“We certainly are encouraged by the progress we see those government forces making and we will continue to watch it very closely”, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.
These include eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has been conducting a campaign against Islamists and other opponents in Benghazi for the past two years.
The internationally backed government’s forces and those of a rival authority in the east are now engaged in a race to be the first to drive ISIL out of Sirte, the home town on the Mediterranean of Libya’s overthrown leader Muammar Gaddafi. On Thursday, a resident told Reuters that an air strike had hit a residential area, killing a woman and three children. This could signal either a tactical retreat or a reflection of the small size of extremist fighters remaining inside the city – after Western officials have earlier estimated the Islamic State’s strength in Sirte to be more than 5,000 men.
Haftar is spoken of as a menace nearly on par with ISIS, uniting militias from several other cities and the Petroleum Facilities Guard to what European Council for Foreign Relations analyst Mattia Toaldo called “quite a remarkable degree of coordination” by Libyan standards.
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Any recent gains for the GNA are fragile, however, with Haftar bound to attempt a comeback and current allegiances at risk of dissolving if Sirte is taken, Toaldo said.
