A major blow may have been dealt to the Libyan National Transitional Council with the killing of its senior military commander, General Abdel Fattah Younes, the chief of staff of the Libyan opposition army.

Right after the incident Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the opposition, said Younes was killed on his way to a military council hearing along with two of his men.

Younes, a former aide and interior minister to Gaddafi, defected on February 20 and helped the mostly unarmed protesters in Benghazi overthrow the regime's military garnison there.

Who could have been behind the killing of Abdel Fatah Younes? And what will this mean for the rebels' campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power?

Inside Story, with presenter Hazem Sika, discusses with Ashur Shamis, a Libyan journalist and writer; Alexandre Vautravers, a professor of international relations at Webster University in Geneva and the editor of the Swiss Military Review; and Rami Khouri, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut.

This episode of Inside Story aired from Friday, July 29, 2011.