In Zawiya, 35 miles west of Libya's capital, Tripoli, the hodgepodge defense force of civilians and police and army defectors held off a six-hour overnight assault by troops and tanks thought to be commanded by Gadhafi's son Khamis, residents said by telephone.
"They attacked from both sides, from the east and the west. We tried to defend ourselves and we stopped them moving to the city, said Hesham. "They were using the military cars and tanks."
Hesham, who asked that his last name be withheld for his safety, said that about 70 people were missing, thought to be kidnapped by the attackers and taken to Tripoli.
The city hasn't received food or medical supplies since the uprising erupted there Feb. 17, he said.
"We still have the materials we had before" but they're likely to run out in about two weeks, he said, "especially the children's milk and stuff like that. The hospitals are working, but they don't have the full supplies, so they try to do what they can."
"They're trying to starve us to death," said Tarek Zawi, a rebel fighter who said that Gadhafi helicopters had been hovering over the city all day and that he'd been told to expect more attacks throughout the night.
"This will be a very bad night, a very bad night," he predicted.
Aid groups warned that a humanitarian crisis was building in Libya and on its borders, where thousands of foreign workers have been trying to flee to Tunisia and Egypt, the groups said. TV footage from the Libyan-Tunisian border showed hundreds of weakened refugees clamoring for handouts of high-energy biscuits from the U.N.'s World Food Program.
Medical supplies also were running low, a situation aggravated by the absence of 700 skilled nurses who are among the more than 140,000 people who've fled Libya since the turmoil began.
Mohamed Sultan, the Cairo-based spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said volunteers from the Libyan Red Crescent had been rallied to fill in at the country's struggling medical centers, but that they weren't enough to care for the hundreds of people being treated for gunshot wounds.
End item/ 129