Libyan rebel commander shot dead

The Libyan rebels' top military commander was assassinated Thursday after being summoned from the front lines for questioning by rebel leaders.

Abdel Fattah Younes, 67, a former Muammar Gadhafi loyalist and onetime Libyan interior minister who had switched sides early in the uprising, was shot dead, along with two aides. The circumstances surrounding his killing were still murky, but seemed to suggest he was killed by his own rebel side.

"We received news today that ... Younes and two of his bodyguards were shot at after he was called in to appear before a judicial committee investigating military issues," rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told journalists in Benghazi, Reuters reported.

Shortly after Jalil spoke to reporters, however, gunmen loyal to Younes "burst into the grounds of the hotel where Jalil was speaking and fired bursts of shots in the air," Reuters reported, citing its reporter at the scene.

Younes had been summoned to Benghazi from the front Thursday, amid rumors "that he was being accused of conducting secret talks with the Gadhafi government," McClatchy reported.

Rebel fighters have become increasingly paranoid about the possibility that Gadhafi loyalists had infiltrated their ranks. And that mistrust has spiked amid the stalemated conflict between rebel and Gadhafi forces, which is now dragging on into its fifth month.

The Obama administration has sought to downplay concern over the stalled progress of the international military intervention in Libya, describing it as a low-cost humanitarian effort carried out with a UN mandate and in close cooperation with Arab and NATO allies. Eventually, the effort will succeed in removing Gadhafi, the lead architects of the intervention say.

However, the lead Western coalition partners--United States, together with France and the UK--have lately shifted that message, so that victory in the war need not entail Ghadafi's removal from Libya--only his removal from power. Some 30 nations, including the United States, have also recently said they would recognize the Libyan rebel opposition coalition known as the Transitional National Council as the legitimate government of Libya until a new post-Gadhafi order is established.

Separately, the Envoy learned from diplomatic sources that Ben Fishman, a former assistant to Dennis Ross at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has been named a director on Libya at the U.S. National Security Council.