By Ola Galal, Alaa Shahine and Dahlia Kholaif

(Updates with report of strikes against Ras Lanuf in fourth paragraph. See EXTRA and MET for more on the regional turmoil.)

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Libyan troops loyal to Muammar Qaddafi used artillery and helicopter gunships to block the rebels’ advance west from the oil hub of Ras Lanuf toward the leader’s hometown of Sirte.

Rebel fighters withdrew from Bin Jawad, 110 miles (160 kilometers) east of Sirte, after battling reinforced pro-Qaddafi troops, said Khaled el-Sayeh, a coordinator between the opposition’s military forces and its interim ruling council in Benghazi. Nine rebels and two of Qaddafi’s soldiers were killed in the fighting, he said. The rebels said today they will bring in reinforcements from the east, the Associated Press reported.

Clashes during the past two days have become more deadly as the rebels moved along the Libyan coast toward Tripoli and government troops escalated their effort to retake Misrata and Zawiyah, opposition-held cities near the capital. Oil rose for a second day and has surged more than 25 percent since the start of the conflict in Libya, Africa’s third-largest crude producer.

There were air strikes against the oil port of Ras Lanuf on the Gulf of Sidra, seized by the rebels on March 5, and government troops under air cover were seen headed toward the town, Al Arabiya reported. Ras Lanuf has a tanker terminal that exports about 200,000 barrels of oil a day. It also contains Libya’s biggest refinery, with a capacity of 220,000 barrels a day, more than half the country’s total output, according to the International Energy Agency.

Misrata Fighting

Opposition forces drove pro-government troops back to the outskirts of Misrata late yesterday, Abu Moad, a resident, said by telephone. Earlier, Qaddafi’s forces broke through the rebel lines, he said. Arabiya reported that 40 people were killed in the Misrata fighting

Crude for April delivery rose to the highest since September 2008, adding 2.1 percent to $106.62 at 7 a.m. in London. Dubai’s benchmark index fell 1 percent, extending its drop this year to 16 percent.

Both Zawiyah and Misrata remained in opposition hands after being shelled by Qaddafi’s forces, rebel council spokesman Abdulhafid Ghoga said at a news conference yesterday in Benghazi. Qaddafi has hired mercenaries from Chad, Somalia, Niger, and Mali, Ghoga said. Qaddafi’s son, Saif, denied using foreign fighters during an interview on Al Jazeera.

Rebel Control

General Abdul Fattah Younis, who resigned as interior minister on Feb. 23 to join the opposition, said on Al Arabiya that the rebels control 90 percent of the country and that Qaddafi’s regime will fall in three days. Libyan state TV accused rebels of using civilians as human shields.

The opposition forces, based in Benghazi at the eastern end of the Gulf of Sidra, have set up a steering committee. Its three members are Omar Hariri, who was jailed in 1975 for his role in a failed effort to topple Qaddafi; Ali al-Issawi, an ex- diplomat, and Mahmoud Jibril, former head of a leading Libyan research organization.

More than 150,000 people, most of them foreign workers, have fled Libya to neighboring Egypt and Tunisia since Feb. 19, creating a crisis in the border areas, the United Nations refugee agency said on March 1.

The U.S., U.K. and France said they were sending aircraft to deliver humanitarian aid and to help evacuate refugees. Four U.S. military flights yesterday transported 328 evacuees from Tunisia, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said.

‘International Effort’

The U.S. is considering military options to support the anti-Qaddafi forces, though any such operation “has to be an international effort,” President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, said yesterday. U.S. politicians including Senators John McCain and John Kerry have called for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Libya to halt Qaddafi’s air attacks.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday appointed former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdelilah Al Khatib as special envoy to Libya, tasked with holding “urgent consultations” with Libyan authorities on issues including humanitarian aid, the UN said.

The Libyan revolt is the bloodiest in a wave of popular uprisings in the Middle East in the past two months that have toppled Tunisia’s former leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

At least 52 people were wounded in anti-government protests in Yemen yesterday, according to Al Jazeera. The violence came as tens of thousands of protesters continued their calls for the immediate resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Bahrain Protest

In Bahrain, where at least seven protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces in the past three weeks, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa said there is “70 to 80 percent consensus” on a plan to engage with the opposition. Protests have been led by the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, which is demanding that the Sunni ruling family takes steps toward democracy.

Saudi Arabian authorities, who face complaints of discrimination by their Shiite minority, yesterday released Shiite cleric Tawfiq al-Amir, who was arrested last month for calling for a constitutional monarchy and equal rights, according to two Shiite activists. A protest to demand the cleric’s release was held on March 4 in al-Hofuf in Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is an absolute monarchy that does not typically allow public displays of political dissent.

Saudi Arabia may escape the wave of regional unrest, along with other smaller energy-rich monarchies such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi, the credit rating company Standard & Poor’s said today.

--With assistance from Mariam Fam in Cairo, Massoud A. Derhally in London, Zahraa Alkhalisi, Zainab Fattah and Shaji Mathew in Dubai, Dahlia Kholaif in Kuwait and Nadeem Hamid and David Lerman in Washington. Editors: John Brinsley, Ben Holland, Louis Meixler, Karl Maier.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ola Galal at ogalal@bloomberg.net; Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net; Dahlia Kholaif in Kuwait at dkholaif@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net