TRIPOLI, Sept 20 (Reuters) -
A prominent critic of Libya's new rulers said on Tuesday interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril should resign over what he said was a failure to supply ammunition to troops fighting forces still loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
Demands have been made before for members of the country's National Transitional Council (NTC) to step down, but the latest intervention is likely to add to pressure on Jibril, who is already struggling with a stalled military offensive and a failure to form a new government.
Influential Islamist scholar Ali Al-Sallabi told Reuters that Jibril was responsible for failing to get enough ammunition to anti-Gaddafi forces struggling to take Sirte, one of the last remaining bastions of the former veteran ruler.
Sallabi, jailed in the 1980s for opposition activities, suggested ammunition levels among NTC forces were dangerously low.
"No doubt on the eastern front the ammunition has finished. We should ask Mr. Jibril, why did it finish?," he said, speaking through a translator.
"Now there is an immense mass of revolutionaries that do not want Jibril. Accordingly, Mr. Jibril should resign. Why is he insisting to continue? Such persistence I see is a political mistake which is not in the interest of the Libyan people."
NTC military spokesman Ahmed Bani denied that supplies were a problem. "There's enough ammunition. The fighters say there is enough," he told Reuters.