NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, has said that officials had seen "flickers" of possible al-Qaida and Hizbullah involvement with the Libyan rebel forces fighting Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

But in a Senate hearing Tuesday, Stavridis said that there was no evidence of significant numbers within the political opposition group's leadership.

World powers vowed Tuesday to continue military action until Moammar Gadhafi stops his "murderous attacks" on Libyan civilians, as loud blasts rocked his stronghold in Tripoli.

At a meeting of more than 35 nations in London, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Prime Minister David Cameron said that allied air strikes would go on until the Libyan leader met U.N. demands for a ceasefire.

Britain and France called Monday for Libya's rebel national council and civil society leaders to help a transition towards democracy, ahead of a London meeting on the country's future.

"In the words of the Arab League resolution, the current regime has completely lost its legitimacy," said a joint statement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

A rebel advance westwards towards Tripoli, which was halted Monday by Moammer Gadhafi's troops about 140 kilometers east of the strongman's hometown Sirte, resumed later in the day, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

After their rapid progress on Sunday, helped by the overnight coalition air raids, Monday proved something of a sticking point and by mid-afternoon they had pushed forward just 40 kilometers from Bin Jawad to the small town of Ras Al Awaja, on the road to Sirte, the Libyan strongman's home town.

For the nearly 40,000 followers of his Twitter feed, Andy Carvin is providing a unique window into the turmoil in the Middle East.

For a media industry facing its own ferment, Carvin, who works online for National Public Radio (NPR), is offering a glimpse into journalism's future, using the Web to report the historic events in a fresh and innovative way.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said the United States currently has no intention of launching a military intervention in Syria, despite a violent crackdown that has left dozens of protesters dead.

Asked on CBS television's "Face the Nation" program if Washington is planning military action similar to that launched in Libya, Clinton answered that it is not.

Rebels on Sunday routed forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammer Gadhafi out of the key eastern oil town of Ras Lanuf and were pursuing them further west, Agence France Presse correspondents reported.

"The town is entirely in rebel hands. They are manning checkpoints in and out of the city and are pursuing Gadhafi forces west," one of the correspondents said.

A delegation from Syrian intelligence services was recently dispatched to Tripoli to scrub the Libyan intelligence archives clean of all the records detailing past projects that the two countries had collaborated on, the ‘Weekly Standard’ U.S. magazine reported.

It said one Arabic-language website claimed that former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam was involved in the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric who went missing in Libya in 1978.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday the international mission in Libya was clear and focused and succeeding and had saved countless innocents from a "bloodbath" threatened by Moammar Gadhafi.

Under increasing pressure to explain his strategy to Americans, Obama gave his most detailed review of the conflict so far, and insisted American national interests were behind his decision to order U.S. forces into U.N.-mandated combat.

A French fighter jet destroyed a Gadhafi regime warplane on Thursday, apparently as it was landing in the Libyan city of Misrata, a U.S. official said.

If confirmed, the incident would be the first shoot-down of a Libyan fighter since Western powers launched missiles and air strikes Saturday under a U.N. resolution approving a "no-fly" zone aimed at shielding civilians from attacks by forces loyal to strongman Moammar Gadhafi.