Shukri Ghanem

Tripoli, May 17: The chief of Libya’s oil ministry fled to Tunisia over the weekend, the Tunisian interior ministry said today, a high-level defection that appeared to further isolate the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

The minister, Shukri Ghanem, the chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corporation and a former Prime Minister, arrived in Tunisia on Saturday, according to Néji Zairi, a spokesman for the Tunisian interior ministry.

Word of his defection came as Nato airstrikes continued to pound targets around the capital, Tripoli. News agencies also reported rockets landing across the Libyan border in southern Tunisia, near a desert area where Gaddafi forces and rebels have clashed.

There have been growing signs that the air strikes are wearing down the government’s ability to fight. With no air defences, Tripoli has resorted to a propaganda campaign asserting that Nato has killed thousands of innocent civilians.

But that campaign has faltered, with the government’s tours of the sites of airstrikes in Tripoli failing to show convincingly that there have been any significant numbers of civilian casualties.

That failure has fed a growing sense of frustration among officials.