There’s really no other way to topple Gaddafi, we’ve seen what he’s willing to do to unarmed protesters (airstrikes, helicopter gun runs, artillery).

BENGHAZI, Libya — Rebels seeking to overturn the 40-year rule of Colonel Moammar Khadafy repelled a concerted assault by his forces on cities close to the capital yesterday, removing any doubt that Libya’s patchwork of protests had evolved into an increasingly well-armed revolutionary movement.

Yesterday’s violence under scored the contrast between the character of Libya’s revolution and the uprising that toppled autocrats in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. Unlike those Facebook-enabled youth rebellions, the insurrection here has been led by people who are more mature and who have been actively opposing the regime for some time. It started with lawyers’ syndicates that have campaigned peacefully for two years for a written constitution and some semblance of a rule of law.

Fueled by popular anger, the help of breakaway leaders of the armed forces and some of their troops, and weapons from looted military stockpiles or smuggled across the border, the rebellion has escalated quickly and violently in little more than a week.

Fathi Terbil, 39, the human rights lawyer whose detention first ignited the protests, drew a map of rebel-held territory in striking distance of Tripoli.

“It is only a matter of days,’’ he said in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolt began.

A turning point in the uprising’s evolution was arguably the defection of the interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, an army general who had been a close ally of Khadafy.

The break by Abidi, who has family roots near the revolt’s eastern origins, encouraged other disaffected police, military and state security personnel to change sides as well.

“We are hoping to use his experience,’’ said Terbil, who some called the linchpin of the revolt.

In parts of the country, the revolutionaries, as they call themselves, appear to have access to potentially large stores of weapons, including small arms and heavy artillery, automatic weapons smuggled from Egypt and rocket-propelled grenades taken from army bases, like the Kabila in Benghazi.