One plan under discussion, said Laga, the military council member, is to continue funneling fighters to Tripoli. There were widespread reports of violence in the capital last week, but pro-Kadafi forces appear to have brought the city largely back under control. Later, Laga said, the rebels would consider surrounding and attacking the Kadafi stronghold in Surt.
For the first time Wednesday, large stocks of weapons and ammunition appeared on the streets in Benghazi. Soldiers at a former government special forces base filled several trucks with crates of ammunition marked, in English, "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya": Kadafi's regime.
Meanwhile, eager recruits continued to line up for duty.
At one center, said recruiter Ghanem Saad, more than 200 volunteers signed up in the first hour after the Port Brega attack was announced. More than 5,000 have signed up since Monday, he said, clutching a thick pad of paper filled with recruits' names and blood types.
With Brega under attack Wednesday, several hundred men and boys who reported to a downtown recruiting center lined up in military formation for light calisthenics.
"We want to fight! We want to die! To Tripoli!" they chanted.
Many had pulled on mismatched military shirts and trousers from a pile of uniforms dumped on the ground of the elementary school serving as a recruiting center.
Among them was Masoud Buaser, 36, who wore a partial uniform and had strung a bandoleer of ammunition around his neck, though he had never served in the army. He also carried a satchel stuffed with TNT, which he said he uses to kill and collect fish.
"Now I'm fishing for Kadafi!" Buaser shouted as his fellow recruits laughed and jeered.
The oldest recruit was Hassan Burki, a thin, hunched man of 65 who said he had retired as a firearms instructor in 1973 after 10 years in the Libyan army. He said he still can field strip an AK-47 assault rifle, and he signed up to teach volunteers how to properly fire the weapon.
"These young fighters, they're very emotional, very willing, but they don't know how to be soldiers," Burki said. "If we want to defeat Kadafi, we need soldiers, not wild kids."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim in Port Brega contributed to this report.
