France has air dropped arms to Libyan rebels in mountains south of Tripoli who are eyeing an assault on the capital, it said Wednesday, a day after anti-regime forces captured a network of weapons caches.

But the increasingly emboldened rebels were under a deadly assault from veteran strongman Moammar Gadhafi's forces in the third-largest city Misrata, where rockets killed one civilian and wounded six late Tuesday, residents said.

France has begun parachuting arms shipments to Berber rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces in the highlands south of Tripoli, the French daily Le Figaro reported on Wednesday.

According to the paper, which said it had seen a secret intelligence memo and talked to well-placed officials, the air drops are designed to help rebel fighters encircle Tripoli and encourage a popular revolt in the city itself.

A night out in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi is not everyone's idea of fun. There are no cinemas, no clubs, only a handful of open restaurants and alcohol is illegal.

But while the war being fought 240 kilometers (150 miles) away is on everyone's mind, Libyans are still game for a night out.

NATO came under verbal fire again on Saturday from Moammar Gadhafi's regime, which accused it of killing 15 more people in strikes on civilian sites in the eastern city of Brega, a claim promptly denied by the alliance.

Meanwhile, three powerful explosions struck the eastern Tripoli suburb of Tajura, where a number of military installations are located, and columns of smoke could be seen from the center of the capital.

Seventeen of Libya's top football figures, including national team goalkeeper Juma Gtat, have defected to rebels battling to oust the country's leader Moammar Gadhafi, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Three other national team players and the coach of Tripoli's top club al-Ahly, Adel bin Issa, have also defected, in what the BBC described as "clearly a propaganda blow" for Gadhafi in "football-mad North Africa."

In a symbolic but scathing rebuke to President Barack Obama, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday rejected a resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Libya for one year.

Lawmakers defeated the measure with 295 voting against and only 123 for, and moved to take up a companion resolution aimed at sharply reducing the U.S. role in NATO-led, U.N.-mandated operations against Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's forces.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is "seriously considering" leaving the capital Tripoli following a blistering series of NATO air raids, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing U.S. officials.

U.S. intelligence shows that the Libyan strongman "doesn't feel safe anymore" in the capital where he has ruled for over four decades, the Journal quoted a senior U.S. national security official as saying.

International Criminal Court judges will on Monday decide whether to issue an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for crimes against humanity, the court said on its website.

The ICC prosecution has requested three arrest warrants for Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, the court said.

Twenty-five mostly veiled-female doctors and medical students look nervously toward a projection screen deep in the bowels of Benghazi's newest hospital.

With little sign that Libya's four-month old war will end quickly, the class is learning how to help patients — and themselves — identify and treat the psychological trauma caused by conflict.

NATO vowed Wednesday to press its bombing campaign in Libya despite a call from member state Italy for a halt to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid as the civilian death toll mounts.

Alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said more civilians would die if operations were not maintained under a U.N. mandate to protect Libyans from the exactions of the government of veteran leader Moammar Gadhafi.