Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi battled rebels on Thursday for control of a border crossing into Tunisia, provoking an angry protest from Tunis as fighting spilled on to its territory.
Early in the day Gadhafi's troops stormed the Dehiba-Wazin crossing on Libya's western frontier, in what appeared to be part of a broader government offensive to root out rebel outposts beyond their eastern heartland.
Tunisia strongly condemned incursions by government forces, when Libyan artillery shells also struck the Tunisian side of the crossing, and demanded that the Libyans put a stop to them. "Given the gravity of what has happened ... the Tunisian authorities have informed the Libyans of their extreme indignation and demand measures to put an immediate stop to these violations," a statement from the Foreign Ministry said.
Rebels rapidly staged a counter-offensive for the border post they took only a week ago, and which controls the sole supply road for rebels in Libya's Western Mountains.
Both sides in the civil war, where Gadhafi is fighting to prolong more than four decades of rule over the oil-producing nation, also disputed whether government forces had overrun a remote desert town in the southeast of the country.
After weeks of advances and retreats by rebel and government forces along the Mediterranean coast, fighting has settled into a pattern of clashes and skirmishes.
Government troops again shelled the besieged rebel outpost of Misrata, where aid ships bring in emergency supplies and evacuate the wounded, killing at least nine civilians, one rebel spokesman said. There was no independent confirmation.
Rebel spokesman Abdelsalam said from Misrata that there had been sporadic clashes on the road to the port and shelling of residential areas. "Those areas are packed with civilians who fled the fighting in the city centre," he said.
"The ball is now in NATO's court. After Gadhafi's soldiers and snipers were driven out from the city centre and Tripoli Street by the rebel fighters, their strategy has been to shell the city from the outskirts. This can only be solved by NATO."
The western alliance has been conducting airstrikes on Libya under a UN Security Council resolution calling for civilians to be protected. But it has been reluctant to fire on Gadhafi's forces in Misrata for fear of hitting civilians, although rebels said on Wednesday it had destroyed 37 military vehicles overnight.
Having secured Misrata's port, rebels were bolstered by the arrival of a ship carrying humanitarian supplies including food and medicines, as well as at least one boat loaded with arms, a correspondent with Agence France-Presse reported.
Othman Belbeisi of the International Organisation for Migration said 1,091 people were evacuated to the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Thursday despite heavy shelling.
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