A car bomb exploded near the headquarters of Libya\'s rebels in their eastern bastion of Benghazi on Tuesday night, wounding two people and fraying nerves in the recently peaceful city.
In the capital Tripoli three loud explosions were heard early Wednesday as jets flew overhead, days after the regime said Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi narrowly escaped a NATO air strike that killed one of his sons.
The explosion in Benghazi took place about 200 metres (yards) from a seafront headquarters of insurgents fighting to overthrow Kadhafi.
"It was a car bomb," rebel military spokesman Omar Ahmed Bani told AFP, while Libyan journalist Nasser Warfuli said at the scene that the vehicle was a white Chevrolet that blew up just before evening prayers.
"I was walking and everything exploded around me," Mohamed Tosi, one of the two men injured, said from his sick bed at Al-Jalaa hospital, where the second injured man, also suffering from shrapnel wounds, was treated and discharged.
The blast sparked scenes of chaos as hundreds of men, many toting pistols or Kalashnikovs, milled around and climbed on top of the twisted metal of the car wreck to chant slogans against Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi.
Several said they believed the blast, the first car bomb in Benghazi since the Libyan uprising started in mid-February, was the work of "Kadhafi cells."
Benghazi was on the verge of being overrun by Kadhafi forces when Western warplanes began a bombing campaign on March 19 to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone to protect civilians.
But since then it has seen no fighting and the frontline between Kadhafi\'s forces and the rebels now lies 160 kilometres (100 miles) to the south.
Meanwhile, besieged rebel city of Misrata was relatively calm Tuesday but braced for new attacks by Kadhafi\'s forces as an ultimatum to surrender expired, a day after shelling killed 14 people.
Several kilometres away, however, fighting continued in Al-Ghiran and Zawiat al-Mahjub near the airport, which rebels have been trying to capture from Kadhafi forces based there.
Medical sources in Libya\'s shell-shocked third city said one person had been killed and 22 wounded by late afternoon.
Government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim had on Friday delivered an ultimatum for rebel fighters in Misrata to cease fire, offering amnesty if they laid down their weapons.
But the rebels, who have been under siege in the western city by loyalists for some two months, promptly rejected it.
With the airport in government hands, the rebels are entirely dependent on supply by sea, and with the port repeated shelled by Kadhafi troops, few vessels are docking, resulting in a worsening food shortage.
In Benghazi, the rebels issued a plea for an emergency credit line of up to $3 billion from the United States and the two European countries to recognise them -- France and Italy -- ahead of a meeting in Rome of the International Contact Group on Libya.
"The liquidity that we have domestically most likely will carry us through three weeks, at the most four weeks," said Ali Tarhoni, who holds the economy and oil portfolio in the rebel administration.
He said the three billion would enable the administration to keep afloat for three to four months.
The rebel leadership no longer wants Kadhafi\'s frozen assets to be unfrozen and given to its administration but for credit lines to be opened that would be secured by the countries where such assets are being held, he said.
Kadhafi\'s frozen assets around the world amount to $165 billion, Said Tarhoni.
The Rome meeting is aimed at finding a political solution to the conflict in Libya, amid a stalemate in the fighting and an escalating humanitarian crisis.
The International Contact Group talks will also discuss whether to arm the uprising against Kadhafi and how to finance the rebels, including through oil sales from eastern Libya on world markets.
But Tarhoni said significant exports were not on the cards any time soon.
"The top priority is to protect the installations, not to produce," he said.
Ahead of the Rome talks, NATO\'s sole Muslim-majority member Turkey upped the pressure on Kadhafi, calling for the first time for thhe Libyan to stand down "without causing more bloodshed, tears and destruction."
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