Fierce clashes between Libyan regime loyalists and rebels at an oil compound in Raslanuf on Friday left "many dead and wounded", a doctor at a hospital in rebel-held eastern Libya said.The casualties were being ferried in ambulances racing back from frontline battles around the desert oil installation, amid conflicting reports of whether the rebels had been defeated or had captured more territory. Heavy shelling and machine gun fire was heard in the desert 10 kilometres (six miles) east of Raslanuf, a stronghold held by Kadhafi loyalists as truckloads of armed rebels headed towards the front, an AFP reporter said. "We have received three patients so far, hit by rockets. We're probably going to have to do an amputation on one of them," Doctor Abdul Fattah al-Moghrabi, director of supplies for Brega hospital, told AFP. An AFP reporter at the small hospital 150 miles (240 kilometres) from the rebels' main base in Benghazi, then saw an ambulance arrive with one man killed in an explosion, dressed only in camoflage trousers. "There are many dead and wounded we can't reach because of the firing," Moghrabi said. The small hospital struggled to cope with the rush of casualties, and one ambulance carrying a man shot in the stomach, with blood smeared across the floor, was ordered straight to Ajdabiya, 50 miles (80 kilometres) away. Medics were tense and at one point scuffled briefly with photographers. AFP correspondents on the coastal highway saw several hundred trucks moving towards the front loaded with weapons and volunteers. A rebel witness who gave his name only as Marai earlier said at least four people were killed in a rocket attack in Raslanuf. "They are firing Grad rockets. I saw four people killed in front of me. A rocket hit them," said a rebel, who gave his name only as Marai. "They deployed a helicopter," he said, in reference to pro-Kadhafi forces. Asked why he was driving away from the front he said: "I don't have a weapon." "We saw people dying everywhere," another rebel volunteer, who gave his name as Abdul Rauf, told AFP on his way back from the front. Blood stained the back seat of his vehicle.
