Disparate rebel fighter groups in the Libyan capital will be brought under one command after an interim period and the formation of a new national army, the rebel commander in Tripoli said on Friday.

An influential former Malian rebel, believed to have been involved in the trade of looted weapons from Libya, has been killed in the north of the country, officials said on Friday.
It was not immediately clear how Ibrahim Ag Bahanga was killed, with one version of events blaming an accident while several other sources said he had been involved in a row with fellow smugglers ferrying weapons back from Libya.
The death of Bahanga, one of the leaders of the last Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali before he went into exile in Libya, follows widespread fears that Libya's conflict will spill over into the remote regions of Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania.

Here is the round up of some of the latest developments in Libya:

- Libyan rebels said they were closing in on Muammar Gaddafi and would merge their disparate fighters in the capital under one command to streamline operations.

- A rebel detachment was heading for Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace 450 km (300 miles) east of the capital, where British aircraft fired cruise missiles at a headquarters bunker.

- Italy has proof that Muammar Gaddafi planned to turn its tiny island of Lampedusa into an "inferno" by sending thousands of desperate African migrants there by boat, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.

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