Former Qadhafi stronghold revolts against Tripoli

Libya's ramshackle government lost control of a former stronghold of Muammar Qadhafi on Tuesday after local people staged an armed uprising, posing the gravest challenge yet to the country's new rulers. Elders in Bani Walid, where militias loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) were driven out in a gunbattle a day earlier, said they were appointing their own local government and rejected any interference from the authorities in the capital Tripoli.
The town's revolt will heighten doubts in the West about the NTC government's ability to instil law and order crucial to rebuilding oil exports, to disarm tribal militias and guard Libyan borders in a region where al Qaeda is active. Local elders denied reports that they were loyal to Qadhafi, who was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run, and Reuters reporters in Bani Walid saw no signs of the Qadhafi-era green flags which witnesses earlier said had been hoisted over the town.
But the collapse of NTC authority in the town, one of the most die-hard bastions of pro-Qadhafi sentiment during Libya's nine-month civil war last year, will compound the problems besetting a government that in the past week has been staggering from one crisis to another. The uprising in Bani Walid could not come at a worse time for the National Transitional Council government. In the past week its chief has had his office overrun by protesters angry at the slow pace of reform and the second most senior official has quit, citing what he described as an "atmosphere of hatred."
Reuters reporters who entered Bani Walid on Tuesday morning saw a few of the black, green and red flags of last year's anti-Qadhafi rebellion but there was no sign of any central government presence. About 200 elders who gathered in a mosque decided to abolish an NTC-appointed military council for the town and appoint their own local council, in direct defiance of the authority of the government in Tripoli.
"If (NTC chief Mustafa) Abdel Jalil is going to force anyone on us, we won't accept that by any means," one of the elders, Ali Zargoun, told Reuters at the mosque. Accounts from Bani Walid, a town about 200 km (120 miles) from Tripoli, late on Monday described armed Qadhafi supporters attacking the barracks of the pro-government militia in the town and then forcing them to retreat.
A fighter with the routed pro-government militia told Reuters the loyalists were flying "brand new green flags" from the centre of town. The flags were symbols of Qadhafi's maverick, 42-year dictatorship. But elders on Tuesday disputed that account. "In the Libyan revolution, we have all become brothers. We will not be an obstacle to progress," said another elder, Miftah Jubarra. "Regarding allegations of pro-Qadhafi elements in Bani Walid, this is not true. This is the media. You will go around the city and find no green flags or pictures of Qadhafi."
A Libyan air official said war planes were being mobilised to fly to Bani Walid. But it was not immediately clear what the government in Tripoli could do. It has yet to demonstrate that it has an effective fighting force under its command and Bani Walid, protected behind a deep valley, is difficult to attack.