Gunmen attacked an interior ministry unit tasked with protecting Libya's outgoing government, officials announced Wednesday, as Washington readied a possible evacuation of its embassy amid turmoil in the North African state.

"The government strongly condemns the attack on an interior ministry force in charge of protecting the government," the cabinet office said in a statement, without reporting casualties.

The United States is deploying an amphibious assault ship with about 1,000 marines off the coast of Libya in case the U.S. embassy must be evacuated, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday.

The USS Bataan was to be in the area "in a matter of days," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Militia fighters stole hundreds of American-supplied automatic weapons and other equipment in a raid on a Libyan base where the U.S. was training local forces, bringing an abrupt end to the secretive program, a report said Tuesday.

Elite U.S. troops have been tasked since last year with covertly forming local counterterrorism units in Libya, Mauritania, Niger and Mali, part of U.S. efforts to widen the war against al-Qaida affiliates in Africa, The New York Times reported, citing American officials.

Armed men attacked the home of Libya's new prime minister on Tuesday, two days after he won a parliamentary vote of confidence but with opposition to his proposed government rising.

Libya's General National Congress, or interim parliament, had elected 42-year-old businessman Ahmed Miitig as premier in a chaotic vote this month to replace Abdallah al-Thani, who had resigned for security reasons.

The leader of France's embattled main opposition UMP party quit Tuesday after shock claims that invoices for former president Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign were billed as party expenses.

Several heavyweights of the center-right party, including Sarkozy's former prime minister Francois Fillon, demanded Cope's resignation following the latest twist in a corruption scandal engulfing him and a PR firm owned by his associates.

An Algerian general on Monday warned of a "worrying" situation on the country's vulnerable borders, faced with chaos in neighboring Libya and northern Mali.

"The deteriorating security situation in the neighboring countries are all factors that require permanent vigilance and rigorous deployment," Boualem Madi told Algerian radio.

A newspaper editor and critic of Libya's jihadists was gunned down Monday in the lawless eastern city of Benghazi, an Islamist stronghold, medics said.

They said Meftah Bouzid, editor of the weekly newspaper Burniq, was shot dead in the centre of the Mediterranean city.

The proposed cabinet of Libyan premier Ahmed Miitig on Sunday won a vote of confidence in the General National Congress, or interim parliament, a lawmaker said.

"The vote of confidence was obtained by 83 votes out of 94 lawmakers present," MP Mohammed Laamari told Agence France Presse.

A Tripoli court ordered a fresh delay Sunday in the trial of 40 top figures from late strongman Moammar Gadhafi's regime, including his son Seif al-Islam, as spiraling lawlessness grips Libya.

"The prosecution demanded that the trial be delayed to June 22 to prepare the indictment," defense lawyer Ali Dhabaa told Agence France Presse at the end of a two-hour hearing.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged calm Saturday in Libya amid fears of clashes between pro-government militias and forces backing a rogue general bent on ridding the country of violent extremists.

Renegade ex-general Khalifa Haftar earlier said the Libyan people have given him a "mandate" to crush militants, a day after thousands rallied in his support in Benghazi and Tripoli.