Near Tripoli, Rebels in Libya Gain Firepower and Defectors

But the battle had made them even more confident of their power, they said, because military units had joined their cause instead fighting against them. Some said that in the fights against Italian occupation and other battles in Libya’s pre-Qaddafi history, their city had earned the nickname “the silent lion,” and was living up to it again. “When Qaddafi killed people, Zawiyah became like a volcano,” said Tariq Mohamed, a resident.

They said the city was now under the control of a committee of prominent citizens—doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers and the like — who were organizing its public services and continued defense. “We are really suffering for 42 years, and people are asking here for the same things as other people of the world — they want the real democracy,” said Ahmed el-Hadi Remeh, an engineer standing in the square.

In Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt began, rebels said that Libyan soldiers had joined the rebels in securing vital oil industry facilities around that part of the country. And some oil industry workers fleeing across the Tunisian border in recent days said they had seen Libyan soldiers fire their weapons to drive off foreign mercenaries or other security forces who had approached oil facilities.

Hassan Bulifa, who sits who sits on the management committee of the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, the country’s largest oil producer, said the rebels control at least 80 percent of the country’s oil assets, and that his company, based in Benghazi, was cooperating with the rebels.

The company resumed oil shipments on Sunday, loading two tankers at a port in Tobruk, Mr. Bulifa said. The two ships — one bound for Austria and the other for China — can carry 1.7 million barrels of oil, and will represent the company’s first shipments since Feb. 10.

Although the revenue from those sales go the company’s umbrella organization, Libya’s National Oil Company, Mr. Bulifa said Arabian Gulf Oil Company had ceased any coordination with the national company, though it was honoring oil contracts. And he insisted the proceeds would ultimately flow to the rebels, not Colonel Qaddafi. “Qaddafi and his gangers will not have a hand on them. We are not worried about the revenues,” he said.

Despite Mrs. Clinton’s offer of aid, the rebels still seemed far way from the kind of unity that might allow them to start serious talks with foreign governments or international agencies. Mrs. Clinton herself said any talk of recognizing a provisional government was premature.

On Saturday, the country’s former justice minister, Mustafa Mohamed Abd al-Jalil, said in an interview on Al Jazeera that he would head a transitional government, with the aim of holding elections within three months. But on Sunday, another figure in the rebel movement, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, seemed to dismiss that claim, saying a national council had been formed to manage the “day to day living” of the “liberated” territories.

The Qaddafi government implicitly acknowledged for the first time on Sunday that it feared elements of its military falling into rebel hands, as Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saif said in the television interview that the Libyan government had bombed its own ammunitions depots in the east.

And the rebels took further steps to organize a central military command to counter Colonel Qaddafi’s paramilitary force. In recent days, several senior officers have joined the rebel side, including Maj. Gen. Suleiman Mahmoud, who commanded the armed forces in eastern Libya.