Gaddafi's troops trap petroleum installations in strategic oil port

Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi's troops have boobytrapped petroleum installations in the strategic oil port of Brega so they can be blown up if his regime loses the town, a top rebel official said yesterday.

Mahmoud Jibril, the rebels' diplomatic chief, said that Gaddafi's forces have also boobytrapped oil fields. He did not state which fields. While Brega is a key oil processing and shipment hub, the fields that feed it lie far to the south in the Libyan desert, informs Boston Globe.

Almost a quarter of a century after his release from jail for plotting a coup against Colonel Muammer Gaddafi, ex-Libyan air force officer Atia Omer Elmansouri has rebelled again.

Wearing an outsize grey jacket that made his already small frame look shrunken, the 67 year-old former pilot styled himself a "wise man" who saw the Libyan leader's true nature soon after he took power in 1969.

"But I am sorry for others who co-operated with him, if they knew his reality or not," Mr Elmansouri reflected. "If they have done some corruption, they have to face the law when we build our government and our democratic institutions", says Financial Times.

The effort to find more assets connected to Gaddafi's regime will continue so the opposition can try to claim "assets that belong to the Libyan people.

Jibril's visit to Spain came a day after France's foreign minister suggested that a possible way out of Libya's civil war would be to allow Moammar Gaddafi to stay in the country if he relinquishes power.

Jimenez said Spain's position is that it is up to Libya's people to decide whether Gaddafi should stay or go, echoing comments issued a day earlier by the White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Gaddafi has insisted he will neither step down nor flee the country he has led for more than four decades, reports Fox News.