Rebels: We Control Eastern Libya
Reuters reports:
Eastern Libya is no longer under the control of Muammar Gaddafi after a revolt spread like wildfire across the country, soldiers who no longer backed the Libyan leader told a Reuters correspondent on Tuesday.
Tobruk residents said the city was in the hands of the people and had been for three days. They said smoke rising above the city was from a munitions store bombed by troops loyal to one of Gaddafi's sons. There was the occasional explosion.
"All the eastern regions are out of Gaddafi's control ... The people and the army are hand-in-hand here," the now former army major Hany Saad Marjaa told the correspondent, one of the first foreign journalists to enter Libya during the uprising.
The Libyan side of the Egyptian border was controlled by armed anti-Gaddafi rebels who welcomed visitors from Egypt.
One held up a picture of Gaddafi, upside down, and defaced with the words "the butcher tyrant, murderer of Libyans", the correspondent said when passing through the town of Musaid, just inside the Libyan side of the border.
The men were welcoming and waved cars through.
Gaddafi used tanks, helicopters and warplanes to fight a growing revolt, witnesses said on Tuesday, as the veteran leader scoffed at reports he was fleeing after four decades in power.
Demonstrations spread to Tripoli from the second city Benghazi, cradle of the revolt that has engulfed a number of towns and which residents say is now in the hands of protesters.
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