I know nothing about libparted. What do the following commands state?
Code:
fdisk -l /dev/sda
gdisk -l /dev/sda
The extended partition that you think you destroyed, what partitions were on there before?
If you're just looking for another fdisk tool to use, there's fdisk, sfdisk, and cfdisk for MBR partitions; gdisk for GPT partitions, maybe more tools. Partition reconstruction is hard unless you know exactly where your partitions used to start. As a safeguard, I do something like this:
Code:
fdisk -l /dev/sda > sda-partitions
Then I either move that sda-partitions file somewhere else or print it out, in case I make the same mistake you made. [FWIW, I have made this very mistake.]