US to end air combat role in Libya, will not arm rebels (UPDATES) (VIDEO)

The U.S. will pull its jet fighters out of the international air campaign in Libya on Saturday, leaving NATO partners to take over air strike responsibilities as well as any effort to train Muammar Gaddafi's opposition.

Announcing the U.S. exit strategy to Congress, Defense Secretary Robert Gates also vowed that there would be no American troops on the ground in Libya "as long as I'm in this job," despite the fact that Gaddafi will "kill as many [people] as he must to crush the rebellion."

Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the United States still did not have enough good information about who the opposition forces were.

"My view would be, if there is going to be that kind of [training] assistance to the opposition, there are plenty of sources for it other than the United States," Gates said.

According to ABC News, Gates said: "The question of what kind of assistance to provide to the opposition is clearly the next step in terms of non-lethal or weapons." He continued: "All the members of the coalition are thinking about that at this point, but as with our government, no decisions have been made."

Responding to Gates' statement, some in Congress reportedly wondered aloud why the Obama administration would bow out of a key element of the strategy for protecting Libyan civilians and crippling Gaddafi's army.

Senators described as "odd," ''troubling" and "unnerving" the decision to end American combat missions Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

Your timing is exquisite," Sen. John McCain said sarcastically, alluding to Gaddafi's military advances this week.

Amid international debate over whether the West should act to arm the poorly-equipped rebels who appear to be unable to capitalize on advantages offered by allied air strikes, U.S. officials admitted that the CIA had sent teams on covert operations into the midst of the conflict.

Gaddafi's resurgent military forces, meanwhile, continued to drive the rebels into retreat, pounding cities that were once some of the country's most prosperous.

Rebels crept back toward Brega, continuing their slow advance on loyalist forces. They initiated a volley of heavy fire late in the afternoon — the most impressive display of firepower the rebels might have yet mustered on their own. Their new 14-tube Grads rocket-launchers made their previous rocket volleys seem like firecrackers.

Gaddafi's forces responded in turn. A rebel was shot through the forehead of the passenger window of a truck and slumped over. An ambulance screamed east full of reporters. More shells came down several hundred meters off the main road. Younger fighters fired machine guns wildly toward the sea, where some had thought the shelling might have come from.

All in all, the rebels gained less than 30 kilometers.

Reuters reported that some rebels were pushing back as far east as Ajdabiya, the last major town along Libya's main coastal road before their stronghold of Benghazi, fleeing a sustained barrage of rocket fire from Gaddafi's forces. The rebels have retreated from clashes earlier this week near Ras Lanuf and Gaddafi's hometown of Sirt.

Misurata, Libya's third largest city and the final rebel stronghold in the western part of the country, was also under siege by pro-Gaddafi forces. According to CNN, most residents have fled the downtown area after government forces positioned snipers on tall buildings and used tanks and artillery in the city's center.

Libya's foreign minister, Musa Kusa, who said he had "electrifying" information on Gaddafi's role in terrorist atrocities across Europe, was being questioned in Britain on Thursday after his defection.

In London, where Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday echoed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in saying that arming the rebels would not violate a U.N. weapons embargo, there were calls for Gaddafi's allies to join Kusa, the foreign minister, in defecting.

"Musa Kusa is one of the most senior members of the Gaddafi regime and has been my channel of communication to the regime in recent weeks and I have spoken to him several times on the telephone, most recently last Friday," British Foreign Minister William Hague told reporters.

"His resignation shows that Gaddafi's regime, which has already seen some defections to the opposition is fragmented, under pressure and crumbling from within.

"Gaddafi must be asking himself who will be the next to abandon him. We reiterate our call for Gaddafi to go."

Hague affirmed that Kusa, Gaddafi's former spy chief, would not be granted any immunity from prosecution, exposing him to possible legal action over allegations about involvement in terrorist activities.

Kusa has been accused of masterminding the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am passenger flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which left 270 people dead. As a former intelligence chief, he is also believed to have information over the killing of a British policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.

Relatives of Americans who died in the Lockerbie bombing spoke to Sky News about their anger at Musa's defection. Rabbi Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband Michael died on Flight 103, said: "My concern is that he is going to be let off the hook. I hope he has to look over his shoulder for the rest of his pitiful, disgusting life. I don't know whether to laugh, cry or throw up. He's Libya's big bad wolf — I don't believe he's suddenly turned vegetarian."

Sky quoted Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103 group, as saying: "He should not be treated as a witness but as part of the criminal enterprise that brought down the plane."

In Washington, details about the CIA's involvement in Libya were also raising questions just days after U.S. President Barack Obama gave televised assurances that U.S. troops would not be used on the ground in the North African country.

A U.S. intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that the CIA had been involved in the recovery of a F-15 Strike Eagle crewman whose aircraft crashed in Libya due to mechanical failure on March 21.

The Washington Post said covert CIA teams had been deployed to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces under orders from Obama. The move appears partially motivated by fears that Al Qaeda or other extremist groups were attempting to infiltrate the opposition movement.

"Such operations are fraught with risks," the Post said. "The CIA’s history is replete with efforts that backfired against U.S. interests in unexpected ways. In perhaps the most fateful example, the CIA’s backing of Islamic fighters in Afghanistan succeeded in driving out the Soviets in the 1980s, but it also presaged the emergence of militant groups, including Al Qaeda, that the United States is now struggling to contain."

Meanwhile, four journalists captured by Gaddafi's forces a week ago, have described being physical and sexual abused and told that they were "going to die."

The four New York Times journalists, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks, and Anthony Shadid told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the feeling was never stronger than when the soldiers hovered over them with automatic weapons as they lay on the ground.

"I think we all had that — that very sinking feeling that this was it," Shadid said on CNN's "AC360" program Thursday. "And I remember on my stomach looking up and I remember him being a tall soldier and him saying, 'Shoot them.'"

The four journalists were released this month after being held for about a week.

Addario recalled physical and sexual abuse that started almost immediately.

"I remember I was sitting in the car and I'm bound, and they had bound my hands so tight they were starting to go numb. And I was sitting there, sort of blowing the wisps of hair out of my face, and this guy came up next to me. And my instinct was that, 'Oh, he's going to help me,' and he just punched me in the side of the face."

Addario said that as the only woman, she also had to deal with sexual assault. "They came and groped me … I've never been touched like that in the Muslim world, and I've been working 11 years in the Muslim world," she said. "That's when I said, "Oh, God, I just don't want to be raped."

Shadid said the four were taken into custody at a government checkpoint as they pulled back from Ajdabiya as part of a rebel retreat from Gaddafi's advancing forces.

"We were put on our knees first and there was a lot of … slapping," Shadid said. "There was emptying our pockets. And I remember one of the soldiers was yelling at me, 'You're the translator. You're the spy.'"

Then, he said, one of the soldiers threatened to kill them. But "another soldier said to him, 'You can't. They're Americans.'"

Shadid said: "I think the idea of executing three Americans and a British journalist would have had implications … There was going to be repercussions of basically executing us there at a checkpoint."

The four were taken to a prison, where Addario said one man tried to drag her out of her cell, but stopped after she put up a fight.

At one point during captivity, she said, a man "started touching my face, very sort of gently and saying this phrase over and over. And I sort of tried to put my head down. And he picked it up and just kept caressing me in this weird sort of tender way. And he was saying this phrase over and over… And I said to Anthony, I said what's 'Mort?' And Anthony said, 'He's telling you you're going to die tonight.' I mean, what can you say?"

Two journalists have been killed by crossfire in Libya and one each in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, bringing to 14 the number of journalists killed around the world so far in 2011, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

— Freya Petersen, Barry Neild, James Foley in Brega