US Edition 
Knife mob attacks reporters in Libya
A bus containing foreign journalists was attacked by a knife-wielding mob in Libya on Saturday, in the first significant manifestation of public hostility to Westerners.
The vehicle was stuck in a traffic queue in the town of Zuara, sixty miles west of Tripoli, when it was stormed by a crowd of about 50 civilians apparently angered about growing petrol shortages.
Only the intervention of Libyan security forces saved the journalists from being injured or killed.
Guy Desmond, a reporter for the Reuters news agency who was on board, said: "We were stopped opposite a petrol queue and the people in the queue were obviously tired and agitated. One guy came and kicked in the door of the bus, saying we'd been filming. Then a crowd of about fifty people tried to get on board. They wanted to drag us out. A soldier with an AK47 from a nearby checkpoint jumped in through the driver's door and tried to hold them back."
About six of the angry crowd, some armed with knives, managed to get past the soldier and on to the vehicle. "A guy with a knife came towards me and was stopped by the soldier. The government minder with us tried quite courageously to put himself between us and the crowd. He was punched and slapped," said Mr Desmond.
One of the men with the knives then got off and used his weapon to slash the tyres of the vehicle, meaning it could not drive. The crowd then tried to smash the windows of the bus and make a fresh attempt to drag out the journalists.
The soldier, and two police officers who had also boarded the bus, fired their weapons in the air to try to disperse the crowd. The bus then drove on the rims of its tyres to the nearest police station, where the reporters waited until a replacement vehicle could be obtained. The incident lasted between 20 and 30 minutes, Mr Desmond said.
"I was shaking afterwards," he said. "I have had ten years' experience of war zones and this was definitely a close call. [Public feeling] here is getting close to critical mass. You're getting to a point where it only takes a little thing to start it off."
There were three journalists – from Reuters, the BBC and the Chinese network Phoenix TV – on board the bus, which was on a regular run ferrying reporters from Tripoli to the Tunisian border. Nobody was injured. After returning to Tripoli on the replacement bus, two of the three decided to make another attempt to reach the border.
"The minder and the soldier were pretty good," said Mr Desmond. "If it wasn't for them, we would have been in serious trouble." He said he did not think any of the journalists had been filming, though he could not be completely sure.
Even in highly-charged situations such as anti-Nato demonstrations and the aftermath of bombings, few if any Libyans have been hostile to foreign reporters. Many are friendly and hospitable. But growing fuel shortages, which mean that motorists must spend days in mile-long petrol queues, are stretching tempers to breaking point.
In an earlier incident witnessed by The Daily Telegraph, militiamen angered by the filming of a petrol queue chased a bus containing journalists, tried to seize the camera and fired shots over our heads.