SIRTE, Libya—Dozens of families fled Col. Moammar Gadhafi's hometown on Monday as fighters supporting Libya's interim leadership pushed to capture the city and the loyalist forces' few other remaining redoubts. 
 
 View Slideshow Reuters Columns of anti-Gaddafi fighters advance towards the front line Monday. 
 
 Refugees who managed to get out of the coastal city of Sirte, however, had to clear another hurdle: Anti-Gadhafi fighters from Misrata, while distributing food and water to fleeing families, were pulling suspected loyalists from their ranks. 
 
 Residents in passenger cars and pickup trucks packed with mattresses and blankets waited at checkpoints manned by the anti-Gadhafi forces on the highway on the west side of Sirte. 
 
 Many refugees said they had to escape through rural back roads after being blocked at gunpoint by Gadhafi supporters holed up in the center of the city. They said some of Sirte's main thoroughfares had been barricaded with sand berms and concrete barriers to prevent residents from leaving and impede the advance of fighters supporting the leaders of the interim government, the National Transitional Council, or NTC. 
 
 Ali Omar, who escaped with 27 members of his extended family, said fighters loyal to the transitional government were also approaching from the east, from the direction of the city of Benghazi, and blasting their way into the city. 
 
 "The easterners are exterminating everything in front of them," said Mr. Omar, 42 years old, dressed in pajama pants and a polo shirt. He said he and his family had been pinned down by heavy gunfire for more than seven hours on Sunday in their home on Sirte's east side. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Reuters Fighters supporting Libya's transitional government fired at Gadhafi loyalists in a battle near Sirte, Col. Moammar Gadhafi's birth city, on Monday. 
 
 As refugees gathered, the Misrata fighters checked their names against lists of suspected Gadhafi loyalists. Some men were arrested while others were told to wait on the side of the road with their families. 
 
 "We're going to punish even those that supported Moammar with words," said a bearded fighter to a man who protested his detention. "We are the knights that liberated Libya." 
 
 A pro-NTC fighter said his colleagues were following routine security procedures in detaining suspected loyalists. 
 
 A frantic elderly woman paced on the highway, pleading with the fighters to release her son. She argued that the family had relinquished Kalashnikov rifles given to them and other loyalist tribes by Col. Gadhafi's regime to fight the rebels. "Give me back my son," screamed the woman, Hawa Gargoum. 
 
 The fighter played down the fierce resistance they have faced for weeks in areas such as Sirte and Bani Walid, southeast of the capital,Tripoli. 
 
 "Once we get the families out of Sirte, it won't take us three hours," to capture the city, boasted the fighter. 
 
 But some families weren't being moved. A group of 140 men, women and children had been trapped for over a week at a mosque close to the Sirte front line, guarded by half a dozen Misrata fighters. 
 
 Another group of fighters, hunkered down at a nearby overpass, fired mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades toward a loyalist base beyond the mosque. 
 
 The families at the mosquewere among thousands of residents of Tawergha, a small town 25 miles south of Misrata, who were chased out of their homes when pro-NTC fighters captured the town last month. 
 
 Misratans accuse their neighbors in Tawergha, which is inhabited mostly by black Libyans, of aiding Col. Gadhafi's troops during their brutalsiege of Misrata this year and committing crimes such as rape. 
 
 Misrata's fighters have ransacked Tawergha and set many homes on fire, and have pursued their vendetta with Tawergha's displaced families in every area captured by the pro-NTC force so far. 
 
 Fighters from Misrata said they had orders not to allow families from Tawergha to return home. The NTC's head, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, proposed reconciliation between Misrata and Tawergha, but the Misratans have so far refused. 
 
 "You will be rewarded by God if you can rescue us," pleaded Najia Saleh, 50, who was huddled at the mosque with six children. 
 
 About 5,000 Tawergha natives were stuck in Sirte and thousands more were being held in the Jufra region south of the city, according to several displaced families. 
 
 Some of the Tawergha families that managed to leave Jufra over the weekend didn't escape the Misrata fighters when they reached Tripoli. Women from several families that arrived in Tripoli on Saturday said 10 male relatives were arrested by Misrata rebels at a checkpoint south of the city, adding to hundreds others detained since the fall of the capital last month. 
 
 "They called us 'mercenaries,' " said Salima Farraj, 34, who said she had two brothers arrested on Saturday. 
 
 Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com ||||| 1 of 15. Plumes of thick smoke are seen erupting from inside Sirte September 26, 2011. 
 
 SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - Intense sniper and artillery fire from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi holed up in Sirte kept fighters with Libya's new rulers at bay in the deposed leader's hometown on Wednesday. 
 
 Sirte, one of the last two bastions of support for Gaddafi, is encircled by forces with the interim National Transitional Council (NTC) and under aerial attack from NATO. 
 
 NTC fighters have been meeting stiff resistance from Gaddafi loyalists, who have managed to hang on to much of Sirte more than a month after the fall of the Libyan leader's regime. 
 
 Lack of coordination and divisions at the front have been hampering their attempts to capture Sirte and Bani Walid, which lies 180 km (110 miles) south of Tripoli. 
 
 A commander leading the attack on Sirte said on Tuesday he was in talks with elders inside the city about a truce, but the head of another anti-Gaddafi unit rejected negotiations. 
 
 There were clashes at a roundabout 2 km (1.5 miles) east of the center of Sirte, where anti-Gaddafi fighters were pinned down for a second day by sniper and artillery fire. 
 
 Forces with the new government brought in two tanks and trucks carrying infantry to try to break through. 
 
 Snipers, though, held up the advance, forcing the attackers to take cover behind metal shipping containers. 
 
 Medical workers at a hospital in Ras Lanuf, which lies 220 km (137 miles) east of Sirte, said they had received the bodies of six NTC fighters killed in fighting on the city's eastern front. Some 45 fighters were wounded, many from sniper fire. 
 
 While the fighting continues, humanitarian organizations have expressed alarm at the worsening situation in Sirte. 
 
 "Our main worry is the people being displaced because of the fighting," said Jafar Vishtawi, a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), near Sirte. 
 
 GADDAFIS STILL MAKING WAVES 
 
 Taking Sirte, 450 km east of Tripoli, would bring Libya's new rulers closer to gaining control of the whole country, something still eluding them more than a month after their fighters seized the capital. 
 
 It is likely some members of Gaddafi's family are in Sirte but there is no information about the location of the former ruler himself. He is the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant. 
 
 A Syria-based television station that has been broadcasting audio speeches by Gaddafi, reported on Tuesday that the toppled leader had addressed his supporters and urged them to fight in a speech broadcast on a local radio station in Bani Walid. 
 
 The report by Arrai television could not be independently verified. 
 
 Arrai also broadcast footage of what it said was Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, dated September 20, rallying his forces at an unidentified location. 
 
 "This land is the land of your forefathers. Don't hand it over," Saif al-Islam, shouted to a crowd of followers. 
 
 In neighboring Algeria, the government ordered members of Gaddafi's family in exile there to stay out of politics after Gaddafi's daughter Aisha angered the NTC by telling the media her father was still fighting to hold on to power. 
 
 Aisha Gaddafi, her brothers Hannibal and Mohammed, their mother Safia and several other family members fled in August. 
 
 In a separate development, a Tunisian court of appeal freed Gaddafi's former Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, who was sentenced to six months in jail last week after he was arrested near the North African country's border with Algeria. 
 
 Shortly after the ruling, a source at the Justice Ministry told Reuters that Tunisia had not received any request from the NTC to extradite al-Mahmoudi. 
 
 Libya's new rulers received an important boost when exports of crude oil -- the country's only major source of revenue -- resumed for the first time in months. 
 
 The head of Libya's port authority said a cargo of crude oil had sailed on September 25 from the port of Marsa el Hariga, bound for Italy. It was only the third cargo to leave Libya since the rebellion against Gaddafi's rule began in February. 
 
 "We are working hard to make everything run normally at the ports," Capt. Ramadan Boumadyan said in an interview. "I think everything will be back to normal in a month's time." 
 
 (Additional reporting by William MacLean and Joseph Logan in Tripoli, Emad Omar in Benghazi, Jonathan Saul and Paul Hoskins in London, Tarek Amara in Tunis, Christian Lowe and Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers and Ali Abdelatti and Sami Aboudi in Cairo; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Robert Woodward)
– Anti-Gadhafi forces, backed as ever by NATO air support, bore down on the loyalist-held city of Sirte today, pressing an assault that’s sent dozens of families fleeing from their homes. “The easterners are exterminating everything in front of them,” one man tells the Wall Street Journal. One commander told Reuters that an elder from Gadhafi’s tribe had called him to ask for a truce, and safe passage for families out of the city. The commander agreed, but so far fighting has not abated. Families who have fled have often found themselves immediately detained by rebels from Misrata armed with lists of suspected Gadhafi loyalists, the Journal reports. “We’re going to punish even those who supported Moammar with words,” one fighter told a protesting detainee. The Misrata fighters have also rounded up people from their neighboring town of Tawergha, keeping them captive in a Sirte mosque. They accuse Tawergha of aiding Gadfhafi’s forces in the siege of Misrata, and have ransacked and burned the town.