A correspondent reports from the border between Libya and Egypt

TRIBAL forces have established control across Eastern Libya since the police forces abandoned their posts a week ago, according to migrant workers fleeing the country via Egypt in their thousands. A last ditch attempt by mercenaries flown in from Chad, Zimbabwe, and Guinea and gunmen firing from helicopters to re-establish Muammar Qaddafi's hold left a bloody trail, but no change to the tribal takeover. The scale of the violence contrasts markedly with North Africa's largely peaceful uprisings.

The uprising that is trying to reclaim Libya from the world's longest-ruling autocrat has also unleashed a wave of looting and destruction—much of it targeting foreign-managed projects, according to Egyptian, Turkish and British nationals, and some Libyans arriving in the Egyptian border crossing at Salloum. Underpinning much of the violence is anger at oil-rich Libya's transformation into a rentier state in which foreign companies won the prime government contracts and thousands of foreign workers from China, Egypt and Vietnam secured many jobs. Widespread killing by African mercenaries wearing orange construction hard-hats for helmets has further turned popular Libyan sentiment against foreigners.

A Libyan construction worker arriving from Baida, the scene of the first uprising, blamed the damage on an outpouring of years of frustration at Mr Qaddafi's foreign adventures and white elephant infrastructure projects while most Libyans lived on in poverty. Another worker from Baida circulated a mobile phone recording of the lynching of an African he said had been a mercenary who confessed to receiving $12,000 for each Libyan he shot. Others showed recordings of dead mutilated African bodies, and a Tunisian they claimed had worked with deposed Tunisian leader Ben Ali's republican guard.

Migrant workers describe tribesmen descending on their compounds with guns and swords, demanding their car-keys at knifepoint, confiscating their belongings and torching their pre-fab bungalows. Armed tribesmen arrived with ten trucks to loot their project, including eighty computers, according to a British contractor working on an extension to Omar Mukhtar Unversity, in the eastern city of Darna. A Turkish contractor arriving from Tobruk also reported tens of millions of dollars in damage to sewage infrastructure. Finally the regime was investing in its people, said the British project manager, who watched looters torch his part of a $2.5 billion project to upgrade 25 universities.

In their reclaimed towns, including Benghazi, the country's second city, the migrant workers report that Libyan youths cruise the streets in their stolen cars using heavy weapons and even tanks looted from army bases. Security bases and checkpoints have been torched, and emblems of the Qaddafi regime torched. Video images showed the current Libyan flag, introduced in 1977, replaced with that which flew under King Idriss, whom Mr Qaddafi overthrew in 1969. It has an Islamic crescent and star in its centre. Graffiti on a court-room celebrates the downfall of "the unbeliever", Mr Gaddafi.

Egyptian workers arriving from Benghazi said the youths had formed popular committees to restore order, likening the situation to Egyptian groups which filled the vacuum after its police force abandoned their posts after the uprising there. But others spoke of violence. An Egyptian accountant working in Tobruk said youths wielding swords had taken his company's bulldozers to capture arms from army arsenals. Hundreds of new Hyundai cars have disappeared from Darna port's storage depot, and container ships docked in the harbour set on fire.

With scant support from their embassies hundreds of kilometres away in the capital, Tripoli, thousands of migrants are fleeing by road after receiving warnings from Libyan opposition groups to leave. Thousands more including Turks and Vietnamese are reportedly trapped near Benghazi airport waiting for planes to ferry them out.

To prevent a spillover of unrest, Egyptian forces are reportedly reinforcing their border. Egyptian eyewitnesses said tanks were heading west from bases at Sidi Barrani, 80 kilometres from the Libyan border. Some Egyptians called on their troops to push west in a bid end further bloodshed. The last Libyan security forces at the Salloum crossing reportedly abandoned their posts on Monday night. Until then, travellers said a reduced Libyan border guard had insisted on stamping passports of fleeing foreigners.