text: TATAOUINE, Tunisia — A century ago, fleeing Italian colonizers, the inhabitants of Libya ’s remote western mountains descended upon this wind-whipped Tunisian outpost, many to stay permanently. 
   
   With those desert plateaus once again under siege, this time by the armies of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, about 30,000 Libyans have repeated their ancestors’ flight. Astonishingly, to aid workers, hundreds upon hundreds of Tunisians, some of them the descendants of those earlier refugees, have opened their homes to these Libyan families since early April, when Colonel Qaddafi’s forces went on the attack. 
   
   There are no sprawling refugee camps at the border, just two modest clusters of tents housing around 2,500 people. The vast majority of the newcomers are now living with Tunisian families here and in neighboring villages, an area that in normal times counts just 150,000 residents. 
   
   “It’s the first time I’ve seen such an impressive response,” said Firas Kayal, a spokesman in Tunisia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That generosity is all the more remarkable, he added, given the challenges Tunisia faces in the wake of its own revolution — which in January ended 23 years of kleptocratic rule by President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali — and previous waves of Libyan refugees this year in the north. 
   
   Even some of the refugees seem baffled by it. 
   
   “Would you give your house to someone you didn’t know, from another country?” asked Maren Abouzakhar, 22, who fled the besieged Libyan city of Yafran early this month. She spoke in the airy drawing room of the house she and 10 relatives now shared with a local family; the owner had moved himself, his wife and their three children into the unfinished ground floor, leaving the comfortable, perfumed second story for their guests. 
   
   “We don’t even know how to thank them for something like this,” Ms. Abouzakhar said. 
   
   Abdallah Awaye, 35, a thin, sun-darkened man and the owner of the house, described his gesture as a matter of obligation and pride. “This is how it is, these are our customs,” he said. “If there is something to eat, we will eat it together. If there is nothing to eat, we will have nothing together.” 
   
   Most of the refugees arrived at the border with little more than the clothes on their backs and fears for the sons they left behind to fight the Qaddafi militias, and were rapidly taken in by local residents whose compassion and good cheer have drawn the admiration of Libyans and international aid workers alike. 
   
   Mr. Kayal also praised the generosity of the Tunisian government, which has kept the country’s borders open from the start of the Libyan conflict. As many 276,000 people — most of them foreign workers — have fled Libya for Tunisia, according to United Nations estimates. 
   
   Asked about their willingness to provide shelter to strangers, residents of Tataouine like to cite an apt local proverb: Travelers cry upon arriving in this desolate place, but leave with tears in their eyes. 
   
   Despite the abundance of good intentions, though, the city and surrounding areas are feeling the strain of so many refugees. The afterglow of January’s jubilant revolution has largely given way to old frustrations, with people complaining of a stagnant economy, inadequate infrastructure and widespread unemployment. 
   
   The police, the lackeys of the deposed government, are largely absent from the streets, having gone into hiding after the revolution. And many worry that the country’s transitional government has failed to break with what they call decades of neglect for the arid Tunisian south. 
   
   “Generosity and fraternity have been taking precedence over the problems,” said Ali Mourou, the mayor of Tataouine. 
   
   Nevertheless, he said, in response to appeals from the city, truckloads of aid have flowed in from as far as Tunis, the capital, 300 miles to the north. 
   
   Three local coordinating centers have been opened, placing Libyan families in homes and distributing donated couscous, macaroni, milk and tomatoes, as well as mattresses and blankets. Libyan children have been placed in local schools, and doctors and nurses have opened a clinic offering free medical care. 
   
   “We’ve taken the thing as a human obligation, a religious obligation, an obligation of fraternity,” Mr. Mourou said, and the Libyans have been “truly appreciative.” 
   
   He added, “They ought to be.” 
   
   He worries, though. ||||| TRIPOLI/TUNIS Libya's two-month civil war spilled over the border into Tunisia, provoking outrage in the western neighbor, while rebels in Misrata said only NATO could halt the bombardment of the besieged city. 
   
   The struggle between forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and rebels trying to end his more than four decades of rule drew in outsiders last month, as NATO began air strikes on government troops under a United Nations mandate. 
   
   But on Thursday the fighting spilled over Libya's land frontier, when Gaddafi troops battled rebels on Tunisian territory for control of the Dehiba-Wazin frontier crossing. 
   
   The incursion was brief and limited, and Gaddafi's troops even apologized locally. But the response was nevertheless furious from Tunisia, where the Arab world's wave of uprisings began late last year, leading to the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January. 
   
   "Given the gravity of what has happened ... the Tunisian authorities have informed the Libyans of their extreme indignation and demand measures to put an immediate stop to these violations," a Tunisian Foreign Ministry statement said. 
   
   Illustrating the difficulty of keeping the Libyan conflict sealed within the country's land borders, artillery shells fired by Gaddafi forces also struck the Tunisian side of the crossing. 
   
   Rebels seized the post a week ago, as it controls the only road link which their comrades in Libya's Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine. 
   
   After weeks of advances and retreats by rebel and government forces along the Mediterranean coast, fighting has settled into a pattern of clashes and skirmishes. 
   
   Thursday's battle for the crossing between Dehiba in Tunisia and Wazin on the Libyan side was typical of the fluid and confused conflict, which broke out in mid-February. 
   
   First government troops stormed the post in what appeared to be part of a broader offensive to root out rebel outposts beyond their eastern heartland around Benghazi, Libya's second city. 
   
   Gaddafi's soldiers apologized to their Tunisian counterparts for the incursion and hoisted their flag at the border, tearing down a pre-Gaddafi era flag that had fluttered for a few days. 
   
   But then the rebels, who had retreated into Tunisia, counter-attacked and as the fog of war descended, rumors spread that the post was back in their hands. 
   
   In the confusion, scores of vehicles headed for the border from the Tunisian side with civilians on board shouting "We've won! We've won!" but they swiftly turned back when they found Gaddafi's forces were still there. 
   
   MISRATA'S PLIGHT DEEPENS 
   
   In the port city of Misrata, the rebels' biggest enclave in western Libya, the plight of residents worsened. 
   
   Rebels accused Gaddafi's forces of firing bigger rockets than the Russian-made Grad missiles largely used until now. A rebel called Marwan said in an audio statement on YouTube that the bigger rockets cause much greater destruction. "Gaddafi the tyrant is trying to wipe out the city of Misrata," he said. 
   
   Gaddafi denies his forces are attacking civilians and says his opponents are Islamist militants and foreign-backed agitators who deliberately put non-combatants in harm's way. 
   
   Rebel spokesman Abdelsalam said from Misrata that there had been sporadic clashes on the road to the port and shelling of residential areas. "Those areas are packed with civilians who fled the fighting in the city center," he said. 
   
   "The ball is now in NATO's court. After Gaddafi's soldiers and snipers were driven out from the city center and Tripoli Street by the rebel fighters, their strategy has been to shell the city from the outskirts. This can only be solved by NATO." 
   
   The Western alliance has been conducting air strikes on Libya since last month under a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for civilians to be protected. 
   
   But military deadlock in Libya has exposed growing international rifts, with critics of NATO bombing calling it another case of the West trying to overthrow a government by stretching the terms of a U.N. resolution. 
   
   At least two loud explosions were heard in Tripoli on Thursday night and NATO jets rumbled overhead. It was not immediately clear what the targets were. 
   
   The official Libyan news agency Jana also said that "the colonial, crusader aggression" hit civilian and military sites in a Western Mountains region town on Thursday evening. Two people were killed and many others were wounded, it said. 
   
   Gaddafi forces also took a town in the remote southeastern desert, state television reported. "Libyan forces have seized full control of the town of Kufra and purified it of the armed gangs," it quoted a military spokesman as saying. 
   
   But rebels denied this. "The battle is not over and the situation is unclear," said spokesman Mohamed al-Muntasser. 
   
   (Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Algiers, Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Deepa Babington and Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi, Matthew Tostevin in Tunis, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Jessica Donati in London; writing by David Stamp; Editing by Jon Hemming)
target: – Tunisia was not pleased today when a battle between Libya’s warring factions spilled across the border today, after Moammar Gadhafi’s forces attacked a rebel-held frontier crossing. The incursion was brief and limited, and Gadhafi’s forces even apologized locally, Reuters reports. But Tunisia’s foreign ministry still issued a statement expressing “extreme indignation” and demanding “measures to put an immediate stop to these violations.” But Tunisia has proven remarkably welcoming to Libyans who aren’t fighting. Some 30,000 refugees have fled there, and the vast majority of them have been welcomed into the homes of Tunisians, the New York Times reports. Only about 2,500 have had to settle in the relatively small refugee camp at the border. “It’s the first time I’ve seen such an impressive response,” says a spokesman for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.