Production has resumed from Libya's western oilfields but protests at the main shipping terminals are still blocking exports from the central coast, Petroleum Minister Abdelbari al-Aroussi said on Monday.

Aroussi said that output was now running at 700,000 barrels per day, up from the low of 330,000 bpd recorded at the height of the protests last week but still far short of the pre-protest average of 1.42 million bpd.

Libya's deputy prime minister Awadh al-Barassi announced his resignation late on Saturday, slamming the government as "dysfunctional" and unable to end a wave of violence.

Barassi made the surprise announcement at a news conference in the restive eastern city of Benghazi, amid growing public anger over widespread violence and a spate of political assassinations.

The global police agency Interpol on Saturday said it suspected al-Qaida was involved in recent jailbreaks across nine countries, including Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

Interpol said in a statement that the jailbreaks "led to the escape of hundreds of terrorists and other criminals" in the past month alone and issued a security alert.

Libyan security forces on Saturday arrested two men for firing at a military patrol in Benghazi, a commander in Libya's special forces told Agence France Presse.

"Two individuals on board a vehicle opened fire on Saturday on a special forces unit stationed in Benghazi city center," Colonel Wanis Boukhamada said.

A senior police officer was gravely wounded in an overnight bombing in Libya's restive second city of Benghazi, a security official told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"Colonel Faouzi al-Oujli was critically injured when an explosive device placed in his car went off," said the eastern city's security spokesman, Colonel Mohamed al-Hijazi.

An explosive device detonated outside a police station in Libya's Benghazi on Friday, wounding five people, a security official told Agence France Presse, in the latest attack to hit the eastern city.

In recent months, Benghazi has been hit by a wave of bombings and assassinations targeting judges, the military and police officers.

Eighteen prisoners have escaped during an attack on a Libyan police vehicle taking them back to prison from a courthouse in the capital, a police spokesman said on Friday.

Thursday's attack is the latest in a string of incidents plaguing Libya and comes after more than 1,200 inmates escaped during a prison riot last week in the restive eastern city of Benghazi.

A Libyan army officer was shot dead in the eastern town of Derna, while another was seriously wounded in a second attack in Benghazi, a security official said Thursday.

In Misrata, also in the east, unknown attackers shot and killed a soldier, Libyan news agency Lana reported, quoting a local official.

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said on Wednesday he had decided not to carry out an announced cabinet reshuffle aimed at resolving a political crisis and ending a wave of violence.

"After examining the possible repercussions of such a move, we have chosen not to change the make-up of the government," Zeidan told a press conference.

A bomb wounded a former police sergeant and critically injured his three-year-old son in Libya's second city Benghazi on Tuesday evening, a security source told Agence France Presse.

It was the latest in a spate of attacks on security personnel who served under the dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi and came as the U.N. mission expressed grave concern about the violence still plaguing Libya two years after its overthrow.