Pretoria - Some 100 refugees in Libya rallied in the capital Tripoli on Monday, demanding assistance from the ruling authorities to return home, as the violent domestic conflict seems to have entered its last stage.
The protesters, from Alawyneh in the Nafusa mountains in western Libya, said they were displaced in June as the area turned into a major front between fighters of the now ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) and the security forces of fallen leader Muammar Gaddafi.
About 10 000 residents in Alawyneh then fled their town and headed for cities like Gharyan and Tripoli, where most of them lived in temporary shelters in abandoned schools and factories.
NTC head Mustafa Abdel-Jalil has admitted that housing and employment were currently the two most pressing challenges in Libya.
Jalil called on the citizens to stay composed and avoid protests on such issues when the authorities were still focusing on the battles in a couple of Gaddafi's remaining strongholds.
He said the new Libyan rulers would concentrate on the people's livelihood in the future, while priority would be given to treating the wounded in the war.
This as the search is still on for Gaddafi, with rumours that he might be hiding in the triangle area in south-western Libya that borders Niger and Algeria.
NTC member Moussa al-Koni said the triangle area is in fact beyond the control of the country, which might give space for Gaddafi and his loyalists to go back and forth around the border.
The area is difficult in geography with sand dunes and mountains, and there is a floating population there, said al-Koni.
He called on the international community to resort to helicopters and unmanned jets in the search for Gaddafi in the region, due to the lack of technical capabilities of the Tuareg military.
The North-Atlantic alliance is to remain deployed in Libya as long as there are threats to the local civil population, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday.
"We are in Libya to protect the civil population from attacks and we are going to keep our operation as long as it takes so that we make sure there are no threats to civilians," Rasmussen told a press conference.
