Bloody Rampage: Libya Protests Escalate, Gaddafi Flees Tripoli, Hundreds Gunned Down, Police Killed, Civil War Feared (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 21, 2011
Libya Protests: Taking power: Benghazi residents stand on a task inside a security forces compound | Associated Press
More bloodshed in Arab world… The violent unrest in Libya reportedly started out as a series of protests this past week that was inspired by revolts in the neighboring countries of Egypt and Tunisia. But the violence has escalated, and has been met by a fierce security crackdown and the use of militias. Hundreds of protesters have been gunned down in the streets of Libya, while other Islamic protesters have killed police and taken hostages.
It is now being reported that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has fled the capital Tripoli and may be hiding out in Italy. It is feared that a full-fledged civil war is looming.
Death toll rises in Libyan unrest
Russia Today: Revolt Fever: Libya joins protest club as wave of wrath sweeps Arab world
From Herald Sun, Libyans go on rampage, ‘control cities’:
Protesters yesterday took control of several Libyan cities and a growing number of regime figures defected, as demonstrators sacked pillars of Muammar Gaddafi’s hardline rule, reports and witnesses said.
Cities including Benghazi in the east had fallen to demonstrators opposing Gaddafi’s 41-year-old regime after military units deserted their posts, said the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR).
With gunfire crackling in the streets of Tripoli, protesters also attacked police stations and the offices of the state broadcaster, Gaddafi’s mouthpiece, as well as setting government buildings ablaze.
Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, appeared on television to warn that the north African country faces civil war.
“Libya is at a crossroads. If we do not agree today on reforms … rivers of blood will run through Libya,” he said in a fiery but rambling televised speech that betrayed a note of desperation within his father’s regime.
“We will take up arms … we will fight to the last bullet. We will destroy seditious elements. If everybody is armed, it is civil war, we will kill each other … Libya is not Egypt, it is not Tunisia.”
The United States said yesterday that it was analysing Seif al-Islam Gaddafi’s speech, and that President Barack Obama was “considering all appropriate actions” on Libya.
From Mirror.co.uk, Colonel Gaddafi troops gun down 200 protesters in Libya bloodbath:
Colonel Gaddafi unleashed a bloodbath in Libya yesterday.
He ordered his troops to open fire on protesters, killing 200.
Gaddafi is also said to be hiring African mercenaries for £18,000 each to help stamp out the rebellion.
One horrified source said: “It’s a massacre.”
Even as they buried their dead, there was no mercy for the people of Libya yesterday.
Government snipers gunned down at least 15 mourners as they prayed at a funeral for protesters in Benghazi.
The brutality is the worst yet as protests continue to sweep the Middle East.
More than 200 are feared dead with another 1,000 wounded in what has been described as a “bloodbath”.
Colonel Gaddafi – dubbed a “mad dog” by former US President Ronald Reagan – seems determined to cling to power at any cost.
He has ordered police and troops to fire on demonstrators with machine guns and assault rifles.
There were even reports of an anti-aircraft missile being shot into the crowds.
Last night one of Gaddafi’s sons – Saif al-Islam – said he feared the confrontation was sliding towards civil war.
From Jihad Watch — Libya: “Islamic Emirate of Barqa” seizes arms, takes hostages:
This is a sizable group — on Friday members of it seized 70 military vehicles. Now they’ve taken grenade launchers and kalashnikovs, with the collusion of a Colonel in the Army — which is yet another indication of the fact that such groups’ claims to Islamic authenticity and rigor find a positive reception across a broad spectrum of the population in Muslim countries, including among those who are currently serving the regimes these groups have vowed to replace. “Libyan Islamists seize arms, take hostages,” from AFP, February 21:
Islamist gunmen have stormed a military arms depot and a nearby port in Libya and seized numerous weapons and army vehicles after killing four soldiers, a security official says.
The group also took several hostages, both soldiers and civilians, and is “threatening to execute them unless a siege by security forces is lifted” in Al-Baida, the official told AFP on Sunday, asking not to be named.
“This criminal gang assaulted an army weapons depot and seized 250 weapons, killed four soldiers and wounded 16 others” in the Wednesday operation in Derna, which lies east of Al-Baida and 1300km from Tripoli.
“Army Colonel Adnan al-Nwisri joined them and provided them with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, three pieces of anti-aircraft artillery and 70 Kalashnikov” assault rifles, the source said.
On Friday, he said they attacked the port in Derna and seized an assortment of 70 military vehicles.
ITN News: Unrest spreads across the Middle East
From Daily Mail, On the run: Gaddafi flees Tripoli as protesters set the Libyan parliament building alight and crowds celebrate victory in Benghazi:
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight.
Protesters appear to have gained a foothold in Tripoli as banks and government buildings were looted while demonstrators have claimed they have taken control of the second city Benghazi.
It is thought up to 400 people may have died in the unrest with dozens more reported killed in Tripoli overnight as protests reached the capital for the first time and army units were said to have defected to the opposition.
The Libyan justice minister has now resigned in protest at the ‘excessive use of violence’ against the protesters, according to the Quryna newspaper, while the Maltese Foreign Ministry said it is trying to establish why two Libyan fighter jets landed on the island today.
A coalition of Libyan Islamic leaders has issued a fatwa telling all Muslims it is their duty to rebel against the Libyan leadership and demanding the release of all jailed protesters.
The Network of Free Ulema of Libya also demanded the release of fellow Islamic scholar Sadiq al-Ghriani, who was arrested after criticising the government, and ‘all imprisoned demonstrators, including many of our young students’.
As Europe and the U.S. condemned the regime’s handling of the unrest, Gaddafi’s son Saif said his family would ‘fight until the last bullet’.
Inside Story – Crushing Libya’s revolt
From Another Black Conservative, Gaddafi flees Tripoli – Libyan parliament set ablaze:
Despite all the tough talk from Gaddafi’s son and the heavy handed violence from the Libyan government, Libya looks like it will be the next Middle East nation to chuck its dictator.
Given how protesters in Libya refused to back down in face of all the violence, Iran’s leaders must be feeling pretty scared right now.
From New York Times, Qaddafi’s Son Warns of Civil War as Libyan Protests Widen:
CAIRO — A five-day-old uprising in Libya took control of its second-largest city of Benghazi and spread for the first time to the capital of Tripoli late on Sunday as the heir-apparent son of its strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, warned Libyans in a televised speech that their oil-rich country would fall into civil war and even renewed Western “colonization” if they threw off his father’s 40-year-long rule.
In a rambling, disjointed address delivered about 1 a.m. on Monday, the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, played down the uprising sweeping the country, which witnesses and rights activists say has left more than 200 people dead and hundreds wounded from gunfire by security forces. He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt” — the neighbors to the east and west that both overthrew their veteran autocrats in the space of the last six weeks.
The revolt shaking Libya is the latest and most violent turn in the rebellion across the Arab world that seemed unthinkable just two months ago and now poses the greatest threat in four decades to Colonel Qaddafi’s autocratic power. The United States condemned the Qaddafi government’s lethal use of force.
Witnesses in Tripoli interviewed by telephone on Sunday night said protesters were converging on the capital’s central Green Square and clashing with the heavily armed riot police. Young men armed themselves with chains around their knuckles, steel pipes and machetes. The police had retreated from some neighborhoods, and protesters were seen armed with police batons, helmets and rifles commandeered from riot squads.
The protesters set trash hauling bins on fire, blocking roads in some neighborhoods. In the early evening the sound and smells of gunfire hung over the central city, and by midnight looting had begun.
“The state has disappeared from the streets,” said Mansour Abu Shenaf, a writer living in Tripoli, “and the people, the youth, have practically taken over.”
About the author
Gaddafi will find its rightful place at the end. to attract penalty in the atrocities.