BENGHAZI  (AFP) – Libya’s victorious rebels prepared to unveil a new government on Sunday even as their troops met fierce resistance from loyalists of fugitive strongman Moamer Kadhafi in his last strongholds.

The new regime’s military spokesman, Ahmed Bani, said Kadhafi diehards in his hometown Sirte and the oasis of Bani Walid to its southwest would be defeated in a “matter of days,” despite the intensity of the fighting.

Last-minute haggling delayed the announcement of the new government line-up, a National Transitional Council official said.

NTC number two Mahmud Jibril, a former Kadhafi regime official, stood accused by some of his colleagues of failing to consult enough with long-standing grass roots opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the official said.

Jibril was still expected to retain his post as interim premier, while Ali Tarhuni was touted to be named vice president in charge of economic affairs.

The defence portfolio was expected to go to Osama al-Juwili and oil to Abdel Rahman bin Yezza.

Fighters loyal to the new government prepared for a new multi-pronged advance on Sirte on the Mediterranean coast.

Troops moving in from the east were some 50 kilometres (30 miles) of Sirte.

“Yesterday (Saturday) we faced a lot of resistance and we expect the same today,” operations command spokesman Ahmed al-Zlitni told AFP.

The advancing NTC troops came under steady rocket and machine-gun fire from Kadhafi loyalists on Sunday, an AFP correspondent reported.

He reported at least 12 tanks loaded with fighters massing east of Sirte, along with dozens of pick-ups filled with with anti-aircraft guns and hundreds of combatants.

There was sustained rocket fire from both sides.

On either side of the road to Sirte, crouching fighters advanced slowly through the desert scrub. Fighters said they had heard one of their colleagues had been killed, but there was no confirmation of casualties.

On the western front, advancing NTC forces swept into Sirte on Saturday before retreating under heavy artillery fire after two hours of clashes, commanders said.

“We are retreating to regroup and re-enter again from three fronts,” said Al-Dhahira Brigade commander Saleb Abu Shaala.

Doctors at a field hospital reported at least 10 killed and 40 wounded in the fighting.

Commander Salem Jeha, a member of Misrata Military Council, told AFP that “we are now concentrated in a handful of buildings in the city and on the outskirts including Wadi Abu Hadi, where Kadhafi’s forces are concentrated.”

Front line fighters and commanders gave contrasting reports of progress in Sirte, with men on the ground acknowledging tough opposition and those in charge downplaying the pockets of resistance.

“We don’t even have five percent of Sirte because we just go in and out,” said one fighter, Abdul Rauf al-Mansuri.

However, the NTC’s Bani claimed that “in a few days the situation will completely change in Sirte and Bani Walid which will be under our control.”

Speaking at a news conference in Tripoli, Bani said the “geographical nature and the strong presence of snipers” in Bani Walid prevented a quick victory in the oasis, 180 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Tripoli.

“We managed to enter the town on the north side that we control. We have advanced towards the centre but we were attacked by snipers and mercenaries who have launched rockets from the mountains,” he said.

In Sirte, Bani said that “revolutionaries took control of the airport and a major air base.”

Bani predicted that “in the coming days all of Libya will be entirely under the control of the revolutionaries.”

NATO kept pounding Kadhafi’s remaining armour, saying its warplanes hit 11 targets around Sirte on Saturday.

They also hit 11 targets in Al-Jufra oasis and three in Sabha in the deep south.

Britain’s The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, meanwhile, revealed that former prime minister Tony Blair made two private trips to see Kadhafi before the release of the Lockerbie bomber in August 2009.

Blair, who left office in June 2007, used a Libyan regime jet to visit Kadhafi in June 2008 and April 2009, the broadsheet said, citing documents discovered in Tripoli since Kadhafi was ousted.

Blair played a major role in trying to bring Kadhafi in from the cold in exchange for giving up his nuclear weapons programme and first visited him in March 2004 in what was dubbed the “deal in the desert.”

A spokesman for Blair acknowledged that the visits took place and that the Libyans had raised the issue of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, but the former premier simply told them it was a matter for the Scottish authorities.

Megrahi is the only man convicted over the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, mostly Americans, when it exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.