The United States will impose unilateral sanctions on Libya's government for its brutal and ongoing crackdown on protesters, the White House announced Friday.
The United States has also shuttered its embassy in Libya's capital Tripoli and halted the limited military cooperation between the two countries that had been restarted in 2009, dpa reported.
White House spokesman Jay Carney would not give specific details of the sanctions, telling reporters in Washington that they were still in the process of being finalized.
The US was enacting sanctions that "can put more pressure on the Libyan regime, that can hold it accountable, can isolate it in order to get it to change its behaviour," Carney said.
Talks on multilateral sanctions were also still underway. Much of the international community has condemned Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's brutal crackdown on protesters in the past week.
Hundreds and possibly thousands of demonstrators have been killed by pro-government forces in Libya as Gaddafi has vowed to stay in power. The opposition has taken control of much of eastern Libya, but Gaddafi has maintained a stranglehold on Tripoli in the west.
"The intentions of the sanctions is to make it clear that the regime has to stop the abuses, has to stop the bloodshed," Carney said.
A ferry carrying US citizens left Tripoli and arrived in Malta late Friday. Carney said an additional charter flight with embassy personnel had also left for Istanbul Friday evening in Libya.
Carney, who appeared before the press to announce the sanctions within an hour of the charter flight's departure, suggested President Barack Obama had been purposely cautious in his response to the Libyan unrest until all Americans had been evacuated.
"The president, in order to focus on his priorities of getting the policy right, protecting the American citizens ... was certainly willing to take a few days of consternation in the press in order to get it right," Carney said.
Obama had held a two-hour meeting with national security advisers on Friday to discuss the US response. The president has also spoken by telephone with the leaders of Turkey, Britain, France and Italy in the past two days.