Libya's new leaders have called on fighters from elsewhere in Libya to leave the capital and go home, interim interior minister Ahmed Darrad told AFP today.

"Tripoli is free and everyone should leave this town and go back to their own towns," he said.

"Starting tomorrow, there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," said Darrad.

"Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."

The demand represents a first effort to defuse possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other surrounding towns to topple Moamer Kadhafi's regime.

Across the capital, brigades from the Berber-dominated mountains to the south of Tripoli and from Misrata to the east form multiple checkpoints and often parade the city's main square.

"The responsibility for securing Tripoli should be in the hands of the sons of Tripoli," Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli also told AFP.

"We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest."