Having abandoned an attempt to recapture Ras Lanuf, anti-regime fighters struggled to set up a new defensive line 30 kilometres (13 miles) further east along a coastal road towards Brega, outside the village of Uqayla.

There, at the final rebel checkpoint before the front, some 70 armed volunteers from eastern Libya milled around, scattering when government war planes roared overhead and listening to shells exploding further west.

The volunteers explained that one unit of former regular army troops, now fighting part of the rebellion, was still in action a little further west, under shellfire, but that the lightly armed guerrillas had fallen back.

"This morning we were there, 30 kilometres from here, but we had to withdraw because of the bombs," 40-year-old Wanis Muftar, a volunteer in camouflage fatigues and toting a Kalashnikov assault rifle, told AFP.

"Inshallah, we're going to try to send people to counterattack."

Tarek, a 32-year-old rebel who came down from the anti-Kadhafi revolution's capital in Libya's second city Benghazi agreed, confirming the fighters had had no choice but to retreat but promising they would respond.

The month-old revolt against Kadhafi's 42-year reign captured Ras Lanuf, a small town and oil refinery on Libya's Mediterranean coast just over a week ago, only to lose it again in a regime onslaught on Thursday.

Now, the rebels seem to be mounting a fighting retreat back down the coast road to Brega, the last main town before Ajdabiya, gateway to eastern Libya on the roads to the main rebel cities of Benghazi and Tobruk.

Earlier, the Uqayla checkpoint had been targeted by two airstrikes. An AFP journalist at the scene saw more than a dozen rebel pick-ups and cars racing away from the front, back towards Brega, 40 kilometres to the east.

Three wounded fighters were taken to Brega hospital for treatment, including a rebel hit by shrapnel, Dr Yussef al-Badri said there.

At an emergency meeting on Saturday from which Libya was excluded, the Arab League came out in support of Western plans to impose a no-fly zone which would seek to prevent Kadhafi's forces from striking rebels from the air, diplomats said.

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