TRIPOLI - Libyan interim government forces entered the pro-Muammar Gadhafi bastion of Bani Walid on Sunday and raised Libya's new flag, a senior military commander said.

"We have reached the city centre (of Bani Walid) and have raised the flag," Colonel Abdullah Naker, head of the Tripoli Revolutionist Council, told Reuters.

Fighters from a brigade taking part in the assault on Bani Walid also said they had entered the town.

Bani Walid is - along with Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte - one of only two remaining towns in Libya resisting the rule of the National Transitional Council (NTC).