Libya, North Africa | featured news

President Barack Obama said on Monday the United States would be a friend and partner to Libya, but urged rebels poised to depose Muammar Gaddafi to not seek justice through violent reprisals.

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.

As street battles raged on Friday just a half-hour’s drive from the Libyan capital, there were new signs in Tripoli that worried foreigners were urgently trying to leave.

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.

BENGHAZI, Libya — The rebel government here has dismissed its entire cabinet in the wake of the unsolved killing of a powerful military leader, who was slain almost two weeks ago after he was ordered to appear before a board of inquiry about his handling of the war effort.

Convinced that their battlefield strategy will work, the rebel forces are refusing France's demands that they negotiate with the Libyan leader to peacefully end their uprising. As the Libyan war grinds on across three fronts and rebel forces find themselves pinned down on their own territory outside two strategic eastern oil cities, the rebels' most resolute European ally, France, is insisting that they negotiate with Moammar Kadafi to peacefully end their 5-month-old uprising.

The battle for the Libyan oil town of Brega switched from the desert to intense street-to-street fighting on Sunday, as rebel forces said they punched into a residential area in the town's northeast.

Tripoli was rocked by a series of airstrikes by NATO forces in the early hours of the morning Sunday.