Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Maghreb’s eastern neighbor, Libya, is unlike any other North African country: an oil-rich desert state whose population is almost entirely clustered in settlements along the coast—and suffering through a chaotic, multiethnic civil war that broke out following the 2011 Arab Spring revolution that led to the overthrow of the Qadhafi dictatorship. . . . His brutal ground and air attacks on antiregime demonstrations in several Libyan cities in early 2011 were hardly unexpected. Within a few months, however, advancing rebel forces captured a number of cities including Benghazi, which became their main base of operations. Assisted by NATO air support, which enforced a no-fly zone that grounded the government’s military aircraft, the rebels prevailed; they soon tracked down and killed Qadhafi, who had fled Tripoli to take refuge in his hometown of Sirte." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 272-3]