The mood was jubilant. In Zawiyah's main square, rebel fighters were celebrating their capture of the city the previous evening with gunfire, car skids, and a wild, feverish cacophony of shouting and hooting.
On Friday the rebels had turfed the snipers out as Nato jets blew up the upper storeys of two tall buildings, crumpling the roof of the city's main administrative building. Triumphant rebels ransacked it, throwing papers and documents into the street.
Seven months after launching their revolution against Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's rebels notched up another significant victory, seizing Zawiyah after a furious week-long battle. They are edging ever closer to the gates of Tripoli.
The signs of battle were everywhere. The four-star Zawiyah Jewel hotel was a ruinous mess, just the letters spelling Jewel clinging to the wall, the lobby filled with rubble. Mattresses where Gaddafi's soldiers had slept lay strewn amid crates containing green mortar cases and squashed plastic bottles.
The body of an African mercenary lay in the square's central garden, his legs poking out from under a blanket. Flies buzzed at his head. Another dead Gaddafi fighter – his face covered in blood – lay nearby.
"The city is ruined. No problem. We will rebuild it," Tariq Sadiq said, standing on the hotel's debris-strewn steps. Next to him a group of excited locals were stamping on a green flag – the symbol of Gaddafi's hated regime – and tearing up the dictator's photo. They offered handshakes and thumbs-ups. "I'm so happy," one said.
"We've spent three months under siege. They [government forces] controlled this city. Nobody could move. Now it will be very good. We feel we are free," Sadiq said. "Gaddafi was a good man. But then he brought Africans to fight the Libyan people." Sadiq explained that he was a worker at Zawiyah's oil refinery, which was seized by the rebels on Tuesday.
The refinery was just one in a series of advances that have seen the rebels capture Zawiyah, 30 miles west of Tripoli, and a succession of coastal towns in Libya's west and east. On Wednesday they took Sabratha, one of the country's most famous tourist attractions and home to a 2,000 year-old Roman city and ancient theatre overlooking the Mediterranean.
Sadiq said he wanted the new Libya to have a succession of rulers rather than just Gaddafi. "We want to be like a European country. We don't want an Arab king," he said. Around him, dazed locals poured into the central square, which echoed with celebrations.
"Gaddafi was a dictator without humanity. He was worse than an animal. You get nice animals," said Shabran Mabrouk. "My brain can't take this in. I need new software."
Rebel fighters circled the square in pick-up trucks, joined by exuberant locals driving Nissans and Jeeps. The air crackled with shouting and Kalashnikovs fired wildly into the air. They shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "the blood of martyrs will be avenged". I spotted a small, tubby boy – eight, perhaps – stamping on a Gaddafi flag. Later he was hanging out of the back of a car, flashing victory signs as crowds gathered in the road.
But the euphoric post-battle celebrations turned out to be premature. Just before 11am the mood changed. A sudden, hideous thunderclap rent the air: mortars. One. Then another. Then another. Then another. The partying ended as locals scrambled to find safety. The cars raced off; people hid in doorways and alleys.
A ghastly silence descended. I counted seven explosions in all. All fell close; one mortar struck a building in the square's western face, skittering down rocks and masonry. The third thudded harmlessly into a sandy clearing. Until February the city's mosque had stood there. Gaddafi's forces demolished it after crushing resistance in Zawiyah; the town – along with Benghazi and Misrata – was one of the first to join the 17 February uprising against the regime.
The rebels may be winning this war, but Gaddafi's forces are not finished yet. On Saturday afternoon they were encamped just three miles outside the city. Rebels said that Gaddafi's men had taken up positions in Jadaim, a small village with a handful of farms. They were shelling their former positions inside the town, and raining down Grad missiles.
At the Beer Muammar field hospital, six miles south of Zawiyah, doctors were preparing for another influx of dead and wounded. More than 83 people have been killed in the battle for Zawiyah since last weekend. Most were civilians who had sought safety inside when the missiles struck – their ages ranging from five to 80.
Mohamad Benisa, a medical student, said that two opposition fighters were killed on Friday. "It was a big fight. There was a lot of fire from both sides. At the end we took it and the Gaddafi troops ran away."
Ahmed Ibrahim, a 25-year-old medical student, said that he had come to Beer Muammar three days ago from Zawiyah's main hospital. During the battle government forces used it as a base and munitions dump, trapping medical staff and patients inside. According to doctors, they stored their weapons next to the hospital's delivery suite. The rebels liberated it on Friday night when they seized the town. But the building is within easy range of Gaddafi's soldiers, who sent bursts of fire from anti-aircraft guns in its direction.
Even the field hospital where the dead and wounded are brought from the frontline offers little protection, it seems. "I've been at the field hospital for three days. But we have been shelled here too," Ibrahim said. "At 5am they sent over four or five missiles. I was praying in the mosque at the time." The shelling resumed at midday, with doctors and clinic staff running for cover.
On the road to Zawiyah, fighters were dragging a big gun attached to a truck back to the action. Away from the bullets, a family in a white saloon car was triumphantly tooting the rebels; a small girl had her face painted in the opposition's colours.
And for large swathes of the country now outside of Gaddafi's control, life is slowly reverting to normal. More than two thirds of Libya is now in the hands of the anti-Gaddafi National Transitional Council.
Back in Zawiyah the rebels were readying for another offensive, and trying to thwart a possible counter-attack by government troops. In the sky there was the whine of a Nato jet.
Gaddafi's regime is clinging to power by its fingertips. But the battle for Tripoli could be long and bloody. As Sadiq put it, surveying his ruined home city: "We hope Tripoli is not like this. If it is, many people will be killed."