"There have been no clashes in Benghazi since Monday evening," said a resident of the eastern coastal city who only gave his name as Osama.

In a telephone interview, Osama told AFP the security forces and demonstrators had brought down the barracks of the presidential guard, Katiba Fadil Buama, after two hours of fighting on Monday night.

Libya's second largest city and a stronghold of the opposition, Benghazi became the focal point of an anti-Kadhafi uprising launched on February 15, and has borne the brunt of a violent backlash by security forces.

Clashes on Sunday alone claimed the lives of 60 people, Human Rights Watch reported, citing hospital staff.

Osama, who introduced himself as a soldier, said he had been detained in the barracks before youths set him free on Friday.

The situation was highly volatile, he said, with the army realigning its loyalty in favour of the people each time a city falls to the anti-regime protesters.

Colleagues in Tripoli had told him they witnessed helicopters firing on army barracks in a bid to prevent soldiers from defecting and joining the demonstrators.

The shooting, which AFP was unable to confirm through other sources, reportedly killed 160 civilians in the barrack's vicinity.

Mayar, a resident of Al-Birkah, a neighbourhood in the southwest of Benghazi, said she was getting ready to join protests on Tuesday in support of Tripoli residents.

In a separate phone interview, Mayar said she fretted over the safety of her relatives stuck in Libya's capital, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away, as clashes had erupted there too.

"We are troubled by what's going on in Tripoli. My brothers and sisters are living through a nightmare over there. My husband was unable to leave the capital. Tripoli is in a state of siege.

"Kadhafi wants to exterminate the people. We are in a state of shock," she said, also requesting to keep her full identity off the record.

In Benghazi, she said she had witnessed "armed people assault ambulances and shoot at the crowd."

"I was at the Al-Jalaa hospital where the situation was catastrophic. A hundred funeral processions left the hospital on Sunday," she added.

Helicopters hovered over Benghazi and gunfire crackled in the streets into Monday night, according to Mayar.

Rumours that the city is soon to become the target of aerial bombardments had reached both Mayar and Osama. The two residents said they were communicating by SMS since Internet connections were down.

Osama said Benghazi had made a food inventory and determined the coastal city can hold out on its own for several weeks.

"But the priority is to heal the 700 wounded in our hospitals," he said.

Egyptian ambulances are parked at the border between Egypt and Libya, 600 kilometres (370 miles) east of Benghazi, according to Osama, who says he has received updates from residents in the frontier town of Om Saad.

According to the testimonies he collected, Libyan soldiers guarding the border have abandoned their posts and now only the Egyptian army controls the crossing point between the two north African neighbours.

Osama and Mayar reported hearing civilian planes land and take off from Benghazi's airport. An engineer who resides near the airstrip backed up their testimony in another telephone interview.

Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, said the runways of Benghazi airport had been bombed, preventing the landing of Egyptair flights headed to Tripoli with the mission of evacuating Egyptians in Libya.

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