The French military assistance was first reported by Le Figaro, which cited unidentified government officials as saying that it was meant to help break the stalemate in Libya. The rebels were under sustained attack from loyalist forces until roughly the period this month that seems to coincide with the weapons drop. In what was seen as something of a mystery, they suddenly turned the tide on the Qaddafi forces and established control over most of the Nafusah Mountains region.

They have continued to gain ground. On Tuesday, the western rebels overran an enormous government weapons depot, though the most valuable arms seemed to have been destroyed or removed before they took control.

Col. Mahmoud Mosbah, the leader of the military council in the western town of Rujban, acknowledged that weapons were dropped by parachute near his town over a three-day period this month. The drops, all at night and totaling perhaps 36 tons, included mostly light weapons and ammunition, he said. He complained that rebels from the neighboring city of Zintan had taken all the weapons and were not sharing them with fighters in other areas.

“The information I have is that the arms were for all the Nafusah Mountains,” he said in an interview at a local college, where he and other military leaders announced the defections of dozens of former Qaddafi army officers. The colonel said an intermediary told him on Wednesday that the French government was upset that the weapons were not being properly distributed.

His claims about the Zintan rebels could not be immediately confirmed. He added that his fighters had received some new weapons, including shipments of Belgian rifles from the United Arab Emirates and the rebel Transitional National Council in Benghazi.