TRIPOLI / NORTH OF BANI WALID, Libya - Libya's interim rulers said on Wednesday they had captured one of Muammar Gadhafi's last strongholds deep in the Sahara Desert, finding chemical weapons, and largely taken control of another.

With the National Transitional Council (NTC) struggling to assert full control over the country, military spokesmen said its forces had seized the outpost of Jufra about 700 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, and most of Sabha.

"The whole of the Jufra area - we have been told it has been liberated," spokesman Fathi Bashaagha told reporters in the city of Misrata. "There was a depot of chemical weapons and now it is under the control of our fighters."