Libya threatened on Sat¬urday to bomb a North Korean-flagged tanker if it tried to ship oil from a rebel-controlled port, in a major escalation of a standoff over the country’s petroleum wealth.
The rebels, who have seized three major Libyan ports since August to press their demands for more autonomy, warned Tripoli against staging an attack to halt the oil sale after the tanker docked at Es Sider terminal, one of the country’s biggest. The vessel started loading crude late at night, oil officials said. 
The oil dispute is just one facet of the deepening turmoil in the North African OPEC member, where the government is strug-gling to control militias that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but kept their weapons and now challenge state author-ity.A local television station con¬trolled by protesters showed footage of pro-autonomy rebels holding a lengthy ceremony and slaughtering a camel to celebrate their first oil shipment. In the distance stood a tanker. The sta-tion said the ceremony took place in Es Sider.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan ap¬peared on television to warn the tanker’s crew. “The tanker will be bombed if it doesn’t follow orders when leaving (the port). This will be an environmental disaster,” Zeidan said.
“They are now trying to load oil,” he said, denouncing it as a criminal act. Authorities have ordered the arrest of the tanker’s crew.
There was no immediate sign of the country’s armed forces moving toward the port. Analysts say the military, still in train-ing, would struggle to overcome rebels battle-hardened from the eight-month uprising against Gaddafi.
Zeidan acknowledged the army had failed to implement his orders last week to stop the pro¬testers sending reinforcements from their base in Ajdabiyah, west of the regional capital Beng¬hazi, to Es Sider.
“Nothing was done,” Zeidan said, adding that political op¬ponents in parliament were ob¬structing his government. He said North Korea had asked the ship’s captain to sail away from the port but armed protesters had prevented that.
Abb-Rabbo Albarassi, the eastern autonomy movement’s self-declared prime minister, said
Zeidan’s government had failed to meet its demands to share oil wealth, to investigate oil corrup¬tion and to grant the regional autonomy.
