Nafusa Mountains

He is a soft-spoken 22-year-old with a massive Belgian machine gun. " Allahu akbar! " Radwan Othman cries out as he opens fire in response to a barrage of rockets fired by Moammar Kadafi's troops less than two miles across the valley. Afterward he goes silent, staring into space with glazed eyes. He doesn't talk much, and his friends at this front-line position at the far eastern edge of rebel-controlled territory in the Nafusa Mountains worry about him. Until the uprising against Kadafi's 42-year rule began in February, Othman sold women's clothes at a shop in Tripoli and had never handled a gun in his life.

Even as Libyan rebels reported driving government forces from another mountain town in western Libya on Wednesday, Moammar Kadafi's regime in Tripoli said it would put 21 rebel leaders on trial for treason. The announcement of capital charges against the rebel leadership was largely symbolic. The insurgents control most of eastern Libya, far from government reach, and are making incremental advances in the Nafusa Mountains west of Tripoli, the capital. But with the two sides for the most part locked in a battlefield stalemate, they have resorted to other means to seek political or diplomatic advantage.

Rebels and forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi exchanged ferocious barrages of antiaircraft and machine-gun fire Sunday as NATO warplanes pounded government-held areas on the edge of the rebel-controlled Nafusa Mountain range, ending a relative lull in combat in western Libya. Fighting also erupted near the mountain town of Bir Ghanam on the southern edge of Zawiya province, whose main city of the same name was briefly under rebel control. The latest round of clashes began after Kadafi's forces fired Russian-made Grad rockets at rebel positions in key highland areas.