News of the attack galvanized citizen militias in the nearby cities of Ajdabiya and Benghazi, who raced to the front lines armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and aging anti-tank weapons.
There is already rivalry between Islamists and secular-minded people, between tribesmen and urbanites, between east and west, between Tripoli andBenghazi, the original rebel headquarters in the east.
The climatic tables for Tripoli in western Libya (former province of Tripolitania) andBenghazi in eastern Libya (ancient Cyrenaica) are representative of conditions around the year in the coastal regions.