The battle began on February 24, 2011, when Libyan troops loyal to Gaddafi attacked a mosque in Zawiya where protesters had gathered for an anti-government sit-in. Soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and struck the minaret with an anti-aircraft gun. Rather than scattering, thousands of people rallied in the nearby Green Square, shouting "Leave! Leave!" Anti-Gaddafi forces repelled the initial attack that same day. Within 48 hours, most of the city was in rebel hands, though government forces controlled the outskirts and maintained checkpoints on the approach roads. Twenty-four rebel fighters died in the first two days. Defecting soldiers from Libyan Army units swelled the rebel ranks, but the forces arrayed against them were vast.

On February 28, government troops launched a coordinated assault with 200 soldiers, snipers, tanks, and artillery. Attacks came from both the eastern and western gates in waves -- first after midnight, then in the early evening. Two pickup trucks were destroyed, one government tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and after six hours of fighting, the loyalists withdrew. Ten soldiers were killed and twelve to fourteen captured, eight of whom switched sides. But the siege was tightening. Food and medical supplies ran short. On March 4, the heaviest bombardment yet struck the city -- mortars, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, and at least eight Grad missile launchers. Colonel Hussein Darbouk, the rebel commander, was killed in the initial exchange along with three other fighters. Casualty estimates for that day alone reached fifty dead and three hundred wounded.

What followed was a grinding battle of attrition focused on Zawiya's central square. On March 5, at least twenty tanks rolled into the city at 7 a.m. and loyalist forces stormed buildings to secure rooftops for snipers. Rebels retreated, then counterattacked, pushing government forces back to the city's edge by 10 a.m. Thirty-three people died in those morning hours alone. A third attack at 4 p.m. was repulsed. The hospital fell to loyalist control, forcing rebels to convert a mosque into a makeshift clinic. Over the next three days, the square was taken and retaken repeatedly. By March 8, most of the city lay in ruins -- tanks fired indiscriminately, and the strongest assault yet came at dawn with fifty tanks and 120 pickup trucks charging toward the center. That evening, sixty rebels slipped out of the city to attack a military base twenty kilometers away. They were never heard from again.

On March 9, the city was reported to be ninety-five percent under loyalist control. Forty opposition fighters and several government soldiers -- including a general and a colonel -- died in the day's fighting. The government bused journalists to a floodlit stadium where three hundred Gaddafi supporters celebrated with fireworks, presenting an image of victory. By March 10, The Times and ITV confirmed the square was under government control. Mopping-up operations targeted remaining pockets of resistance. On March 11, a pro-Gaddafi rally was held in the city center before one hundred foreign journalists, sealing Zawiya's fall. In the weeks that followed, thousands of residents were taken for questioning. The regime sought to erase every trace of rebellion.

Zawiya's story did not end with its fall. Guerrilla attacks resumed as early as April. In June, anti-Gaddafi forces launched a fresh assault on the city, though loyalists repelled it within two days. The decisive moment came in August 2011, when a broader rebel offensive swept into the plains surrounding Zawiya. By August 20, rebel forces had taken full control of the city, including the eastern districts, a fact confirmed by journalists taken to inspect former loyalist positions. The coastal road to Tripoli was open. Within days, the capital itself would fall. Zawiya's central square -- shelled, taken, lost, retaken, and lost again across those terrible March weeks -- was finally, permanently, in rebel hands. The cost had been immense: hundreds dead, a city reduced to rubble, and a population scarred by weeks of urban warfare that tested every definition of endurance.