France sending aid to anti-Gaddafi forces in Benghazi, Libya, Fillon says

France is sending two planeloads of aid to opposition territory in Libya, Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said.

The announcement, reported by the BBC, came hours after Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie quit amid controversy over her contacts with the former Tunisian regime.

Alliot-Marie was also heavily criticized for initially offering French help to quell the uprising in Tunisia.

Paris has been stung by accusations that it was too cozy with the authoritarian regimes overthrown in recent weeks.

"In a few hours two French planes will leave for Benghazi on behalf of the French government with doctors, nurses, medical equipment and medicine," Fillon said in an interview with France's RTL radio.

Benghazi, in Libya's east, has been at the center of the Libyan uprising and is now in opposition hands, according to GlobalPost's Nichole Sobecki, who arrived there Friday.

"This will be the start of a massive humanitarian aid operation to the populations of liberated areas," he said.

He said France had not ruled out backing a NATO-enforced "no-fly zone" over Libya — one way it has been suggested that foreign governments could help defend Libyan rebels against the remaining air power of Muammar Gaddafi.

Meanwhile, Fillon has insisted Alliot-Marie — whose links to the regime of former President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and the fact that she had taken a Christmas holiday in Tunisia during the uprising made her position increasingly untenable — did nothing wrong.

"She was not at fault. This was not a moral decision, but a political one," said Fillon, who himself came under fire recently after admitting that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak provided his family free lodging, a plane flight and an outing on the Nile during their Dec. 26-Jan. 2 vacation in Egypt. The trip came shortly before the mass protests aimed at ousting Mubarak.

— Freya Petersen