Rebels from the western town of Zintan were seen as heroes after playing a key role in toppling Moammar Gadhafi. Empowered and flush with weapons from Libya's civil war, the militiamen now are fighting again — settling scores with a rival tribe in clashes that have killed dozens of people.

The bloodshed last month between the rebels and the Mashashia tribe reflects the simmering divisions left over from Gadhafi's practice of consolidating his power by pitting communities against each other.

Some fear that transition to democracy in this oil-rich North African nation — already suffering after the civil war that led to Gadhafi's downfall in 2011 — will be further derailed.

That transition began July 7 with Libya's first parliamentary elections in a half-century. The new legislature will appoint a government that faces a web of unsettled conflicts in a society left crippled and wounded by four decades of repression, simmering ethnic hatred and no real judicial system under Gadhafi.