A Libyan colonel that defected to the rebel side last month has said that the regime has had to use soldiers from its elite special forces to command popular militias after suffering months of desertions.
The officer escaped from a government town in the plains below the country's Western Mountains. Lying only 60 miles from Tripoli, the rebels have launched repeated offensives in the effort to reach the capital.
Leaders of the elite fighting force belonging to Gaddafi's son Khamis had left their brigades to fight elsewhere and came to man this front line reported the Colonel. "The leaders are from the Khamis Brigades, but the rest are new recruits or volunteers. They were inexperienced; some barely could hold a gun".
After six months of fighting in a war that is raging across the country, and has three major front lines, the colonel's account depicts signs of strain in government ranks.
Hundreds of young men from low income families in Libya, many with roots in neighbouring Mali and Niger were recruited from their homes in the south of the country, captured government soldiers told the Daily Telegraph from inside a locked hospital ward in the rebel held western mountain town of Yefren.
"I was promised 500 dinar to fight. My father died long ago, and my family needed the money. When I got there I was frightened and I wanted to go home.
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