Less than a month after rebels captured Tripoli and forced longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi to flee, revolutionary militia groups are sweeping up any weapons they can find, often from huge unguarded weapons dumps left behind by Gaddafi’s forces.

Some of the groups barely recognize the authority of the new civilian government, and rivalries are already surfacing — developments that are worrying officials, civilians and human rights groups.

“Until we have a national army, this will pose a real security threat,” said Noman Benotman, a former anti-Gaddafi militant who is now a senior analyst with the Quilliam think-tank in London…

“While the international community until today is focused on manpads, for Libya the greater danger is from explosives and weapons that can be turned against them, as they were in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “The mix of these unsecured warehouses, with a leader still on the run who has access to vast funds, and a proportion of the population still quite loyal to him, is a lethal one.”