Wars, Libyan Rebels | featured news

Fighters for Libya's new leadership managed to take over the port in Sirte on Tuesday morning, a senior military commander in Tripoli said.

"Negotiations are over, and we are waiting for orders" to attack, said Mohammed al-Fassi, a rebel commander at a staging area about 45 miles from Bani Walid.

The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamic militant group, insisted Friday that the new Libya will shun extremism.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called on his supporters on Thursday to march on Tripoli and "purify" the capital of rebels, who he denounced as "rats, crusaders and unbelievers."

The son and heir apparent of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Seif al-Islam, resurfaced free and defiant early Tuesday a day after rebels claimed to have captured him, boasting in a bizarre reappearance that his father's loyalists still control parts of Tripoli and would crush the rebellion.

With Libyan rebels reaching Tripoli, the endgame is at hand. Intense fighting may lie ahead, but three of Moammar Gadhafi's sons are reportedly in custody and the power of the regime appears to be rapidly eroding.

With Libyan rebels on the brink of toppling Moammar Gadhafi's 42-year rule, leaders around the world -- with the exception of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez -- called on the longtime leader to step down.

Explosions and gunfire rocked Tripoli overnight, after days of battlefield defeats left Muammar Gaddafi's government and troops penned ever more tightly in the besieged capital by a rebel advance.

Libyan rebels said on Monday they had seized a second strategic town near Tripoli within 24 hours, completing the encirclement of the capital in the boldest advances of their six-month-old uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Muammar Gaddafi urged Libyans on Monday to free the country from "NATO and traitors," as rebels in the west began to strangle a major lifeline to his capital.