The insurgents said NATO air strikes on Tuesday night enabled them to expel pro-Kadhafi troops 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the port of Misrata, which remains encircled by regime troops to the east, west and south.

That put the Grad rockets of the loyalist forces out of range of the port, a lifeline for rebels in the western city of half a million residents which has been under siege for more than seven weeks.

"Kadhafi's men are dead. There are still vehicles and burned bodies, and we seized many weapons," said a leader of the rebel group, showing as examples a French-made Milan missile, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic guns.

But a huge plume of black smoke rose above Misrata as almost continuous explosions were heard and NATO warplanes overflew the western city, an AFP correspondent reported.

"There are a lot of explosions here, we need to evacuate," Ashuria Yahaya of Nigeria said in his wind-battered tent camp, which was hit on Tuesday as Kadhafi's forces attacked Misrata port with Grad missiles.

The camp features few real tents.

Most of them are made of tree branches topped with blue tarpaulin or a carpet, and are surrounded by dirt, litter and rocks.

"We fled as there were many people wounded, one dead. All night we did not know if we would be killed or not," said Mati Hamis, 32, a migrant who worked in a factory for seven months.

Hamis said he came to Libya as the pay was better than at home, but now "there is nothing here but death!"

Yahaya said he was "very scared" like others at the camp.

"It's been two months that I have been here under a tent. We eat very little, there is no water. We have to go back to Nigeria," the 31-year-old told AFP.

The Red Crescent describes conditions at the camp as "inhumane" as "there is no safe place in Misrata," with rockets and shells falling every day.

"Tents offer no protection," said Mohammed Hosseini, 27. "The only thing we are asking for is to leave here before we get killed."

NATO said in a statement on Wednesday that its strikes destroyed six military vehicles, seven technical vehicles and a surface-to-air missile launcher in Misrata the day before.

The air raids came as forces loyal to Kadhafi fired a volley of Grad rockets at Misrata's port, killing a Nigerian refugee and forcing an aid ship to stay out to sea before it returned on Wednesday.

The rockets fell on the port and its surroundings, including the camp of tents housing African refugees waiting to flee the besieged city on humanitarian ships.

The Red Crescent said Tuesday's rocket attack killed a Nigerian man and wounded a dozen other refugees, six of them seriously. It was previously reported that three African refugees died.

Around 1,300 refugees are stranded in Misrata, most of them Nigerians, but they also included Chadians, Ghanians and Sudanese.

Not all of them will be able to leave as the next ship due to leave the port has only 900 seats, but will still have to find room to squeeze in another 100 passengers.

A succession of humanitarian ships have evacuated thousands of foreigners from Misrata over the past few weeks.

The latest one from the International Organisation for Migration docked at the port briefly on Tuesday before it was steered out to sea because of the Grad missile attack.

It spent the night offshore before coming in again on Wednesday morning to unload its cargo of humanitarian aid and collect the 1,000 refugees, according to an AFP journalist.

"We hope that there will be another rotation of our ship," an IOM official said, adding this "depends on the generosity of donors who fund us."

As the battle for Misrata intensifies, officials on both sides of the conflict admit to the strategic importance of the port, underlining its value as a make-or-break city.

"This port is too much of a headache for Kadhafi, so he wants to destroy it at whatever cost," Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, military spokesman of the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, said on Wednesday.

An official in the capital told AFP, on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, that Misrata was of critical importance to the regime because "simply put: if it fell, the rebels will be at the doors of Tripoli."

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