US President Barack Obama was due to address the nation on the conflict later in the day and was expected to tell Americans that the assault on Libya averted a humanitarian "catastrophe". Forces loyal to Qadhafi have ended their onslaught on rebel-held Misrata and "calm" has been restored, the foreign ministry announced, without clearly indicating whether the town was back under loyalist control. Opposition representatives in Benghazi, meanwhile, were trying to form a government-in-waiting. At present, the official voice of Libya's opposition rests with the so-called Provisional Transitional National Council (PTNC), a group of 31 members representing the country's major cities and towns. Life returned to something like normal in Benghazi but the insurgents say it will not become the capital of a rebel state; their aim is to take Tripoli and rule over a unified, post-Qadhafi Libya. On Sunday, the rebels had seized Bin Jawad after retaking the key oil town of Ras Lanuf as they advanced with the support of coalition air strikes on Qadhafi's forces. But on Monday they came under heavy machine-gun fire from regime loyalists in pick-up trucks on the road from Bin Jawad to Nofilia. The insurgents pulled back into Bin Jawad and opened up with heavy artillery. Pick-ups flying the green flag of Tripoli and mounted with heavy machine guns opened up on the rebels who replied with multiple rocket launchers and cannon fire. A 10-minute incoming artillery barrage panicked the thousand or so rebels along the road outside Bin Jawad, sending them fleeing in disorder.
"It won't be as easy as we thought to take Sirte and then march on Tripoli," said 20-year-old rebel fighter Ahmad al-Badri, wearing incomplete battledress and clutching an old Kalashnikov.
"But we won't stop, we'll advance. They can't hold us up for long," Badri added. All of the rebels who spoke to AFP expressed confidence that coalition warplanes would reopen the road to Sirte for them, but none had heard of NATO's decision to strike only when civilians were threatened by Qadhafi's army. Later in the day, the advance continued cautiously as the rebels searched houses along the road and appeared to encounter diminishing resistance from Qadhafi loyalists. British jets bombed ammunition bunkers in the south early on Monday after weekend strikes took out a score of tanks and armoured vehicles near the towns of Ajdabiya and Misrata, the defence ministry said in London. Tornado GR4s flying from Britain and refuelled mid-air conducted strike missions against ammunition bunkers in Qadhafi's southern stronghold of Sebha. NATO has finally taken over enforcing a no-fly zone and flew its first enforcement mission over Libya on Sunday in the operation codenamed "Unified Protector". Officials cautioned, however, that the transfer of command would take 48 to 72 hours.
"Our goal is to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack from the Qadhafi regime," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"NATO will implement all aspects of the UN resolution. Nothing more, nothing less," he said. The command transfer came as Tripoli also came under attack by what state television called "the colonial aggressor". UN Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted earlier this month, authorised military action to protect Libyan civilians, Qatar became the second nation, after France, to recognise the PTNC as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Libyan people, the Gulf state's QNA state news agency said. Of the 31 PTNC members, the names of only 13 have been publicly revealed. Council spokesmen say it is still too dangerous to identify members in areas still controlled by Qadhafi. Ali Tarhoni, the rebel representative responsible for economy, finance and oil, said on Sunday that the provisional government was already producing oil from fields under its control and had reached an agreement to export it under Qatari auspices.
"We are producing about 100,000 to 130,000 barrels a day, we can easily up that to about 300,000 a day," Tarhoni told a news conference. Oil prices fell as traders eyed the possible resumption of exports from rebel-held territories. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for May, settled at $103.98 a barrel, a decline of $1.42 from Friday's closing level. In London, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in May shed 79 cents to close at $114.80 a barrel.