Car bomb rocks Libyan rebels’ hotel

A huge car bomb yesterday rocked a major hotel in Benghazi, the Libyan rebels’ capital in the east of the country, but caused no casualties, witnesses and police said.

Two cars were destroyed in the explosion, which occurred in the parking lot of the Tibesti hotel, used by rebel leaders, diplomats and journalists.

A police officer said a bomb was detonated in one car and the blast damaged a second car parked next to it.

Hotel staff and witnesses said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

“I was driving by when I heard the blast. I stopped and I was one of the first on the scene. I saw a third car, parked further away, was on fire, but I saw no casualties,” Yussuf, a young resident of Benghazi, said.

Minutes after the blast a crowd of about 500 people gathered, waving flags of the rebellion and chanting “Free Libya”, as a huge plume of black smoke billowed across the sky.

A group of youths clambered onto one of the damaged vehicles, waving flags and shouting “No to Gaddafi.”

“Gaddafi wants to scare us, but he cannot. We have God on our side,” Yussuf said.

Police with sniffer dogs arrived on the scene to gather debris that had been strewn across the road in front of the hotel and an adjacent sea-front park that is popular with families in the evening.

The Tibesti is the hotel in which Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini inaugurated an Italian consular office on Tuesday.

In doing so, he told reporters that “Gaddafi’s regime is finished” and that Italy would fully support the National Transitional Council (NTC), the political arm of the rebellion. Mr Frattini’s comments drew strong condemnation from the Tripoli regime.

Meanwhile earlier yesterday Libyan Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem announced in Italy that he had resigned and left Libya to join the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi “to fight for a democratic country.”

“I can’t work in this situation so I have left my country and my job to join the choice made by young Libyans to fight for a democratic country,” he told journalists, following weeks of rumours and denials about his defection.

“There is a lot of internal and external pressure in Libya right now... There could be many solutions, including a peaceful solution,” he said.