Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi are now "on the back foot" and are being pursued by rebels from the strategic Eastern town of Ajdabiya, rebel spokesmen in their stronghold of Benghazi said on Saturday.
"Ajdabiya is 100 per cent in the hands of our forces, and we are pursuing Gaddafi's forces on the road to Brega," 80 kilometres (50 miles) away, one spokesman Shamsiddin Abdulmolah, told reporters.
"Who is on the back foot are Gaddafi's forces because they no longer have air power and heavy weaponry available" after a week of airstrikes by coalition warplanes, he said.
Another spokesman, Ahmed Khalifa, said the rebels were holding at least 13 Gaddafi fighters they were treating as prisoners of war.
That figure, counted as of late on Friday, could increase as the rebels swept through Ajdabiya.
"At the moment a combing process is underway in the city," Khalifa said.
He added that two civilians died and nine were wounded in fighting in Ajdabiya early on Saturday. But he said coalition bombing overnight had not caused any civilian fatalities.
Abdulmolah said the coalition airstrikes had "evened the playing field" for the rebels battling Gaddafi's forces.
Two weeks agao, the rebels triumphantly claimed to have taken charge of Ajdabiya, only to be pushed out last week by a regime offensive that threatened to crush their Benghazi stronghold at one point.
Coalition bombardments, though, forced Gaddafi's forces back to Ajdabiya, where tanks had been holding off the rebels until airstrikes on Friday and early on Saturday took them out. Rebels waving the "V-for-victory" sign swept in early on Saturday.
Abdulmolah said another factor in the rebels' favour was that experienced military officers and soldiers who had defected from Gaddafi's side early in the conflict had since Thursday taken the lead role in besieging Ajdabiya, restraining the enthusiastic but undisciplined untrained rebels.
Those ex-military rebels had coordinated their attacks with the coalition, firing between bombing raids, the two spokesmen said.