Libya evacuation decision 'minute by minute,' U.S. official says

By Jomana Karadsheh and Barbara Starr, CNN

May 20, 2014 -- Updated 0551 GMT (1351 HKT)

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The U.S. military has doubled the number of aircraft standing by in Italy if needed to evacuate Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, CNN has learned.

A decision to evacuate as violence in the Libyan capital grows is "minute by minute, hour by hour," a defense official told CNN on Monday.

Fierce fighting swept across the city Sunday after armed men stormed the country's interim Parliament. Sporadic bursts of gunfire and blasts could still be heard on the outskirts of the capital Monday evening.

The violence appeared to be some of the worst since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

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The birth of free Libya

After a six-month struggle, Libya’s rebels have seized power. We look at Tripoli in rebel hands and, in a second article, at the new people now in control.

WESTERN governments could hardly have hoped for a better finale. Libyans themselves finished off the regime’s reign in the capital, enabling NATO to retreat to the wings and refute the last flourish of the colonel’s spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, delivered on a crackly radio, that the conquest was the work of imperialism. Liberation came from the west, not the east, allaying Tripoli’s fears of a Benghazi takeover. The doomsday scenarios of a bloody civil war in the streets proved mercifully overblown.