Protesters on Monday took control of several Libyan cities and a growing number of regime figures defected, as demonstrators sacked pillars of Col. 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, 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.”
Libya’s justice minister, Mustapha Abdeljalil, resigned on Monday in protest against “the excessive use of force” against demonstrators, the Quryna newspaper website reported.
Tripoli’s ambassador to New Delhi Ali al-Essawi told the BBC he was also resigning for the same reason, and accused the regime of using foreign mercenaries against the protesters. In Cairo, Libya’s Arab League envoy said he had resigned to “join the revolution”.
British foreign secretary William Hague, meanwhile, said there was information to suggest that Col. Muammar Gaddafi had left the country and was on his way to Venezuela. There had earlier been intense speculation that the dicator had fled.
The Venezuelan government has, however, denied that the Libyan strongman was on his way to that country.
The United States said on Monday that it was analysing Seif al-Islam’s speech, and that President Barack Obama was “considering all appropriate actions” on Libya.
IFHR head Souhayr Belhassen said protesters had control of Benghazi, Sirte, Tobruk in the east, as well as Misrata, Khoms, Tarhounah, Zenten, Al-Zawiya and Zouara, closer to the capital Tripoli.
Witnesses in Sirte denied that Gaddafi’s coastal hometown was under the control of protesters, but others in Al-Zawiya said that the police had fled that city.
The IFHR said that besides soldiers and diplomats, other senior regime officials had also defected to the side of protesters, demanding that Gaddafi go after more than 41 years in power. It said the protests had resulted in up to 400 deaths. Human Rights Watch earlier cited a death toll of 233.
Protesters in the capital attacked the state broadcaster’s offices and overnight set alight branches of the People’s Committees that are the mainstay of the regime, witnesses said.
“The headquarters of Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia radio have been sacked,” one said by telephone on condition of anonymity. Broadcasts on both channels were interrupted on Sunday evening but resumed on Monday morning.
“Protesters burned and ransacked the ministry of interior building” in central Tripoli, one witness said in an email.
Earlier, heavy gunfire erupted in central Tripoli and several city areas for the first time since the uprising began in eastern Libya, witnesses said. “When we heard the unrest was approaching, we stocked up on flour and tomatoes. It’s definitely the end of the regime. This has never happened in Libya before. We are praying that it ends quickly,” a resident of a suburb east of Tripoli told AFP in Cairo by telephone.
“Our neighbour was killed last night,” added another resident of central Tripoli. “There is a lot of shooting outside. No one from our family has gone to work today.”
Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, 38, who holds no formal post but wields vast influence as heir apparent, suggested that Benghazi was out of government control. “At this moment there are tanks being driven by civilians in
Benghazi,” he said, insisting that the uprising was aimed at installing Islamist rule and that it would be ruthlessly crushed.
Some 500 Libyans meanwhile stormed and looted a South Korean construction site near Tripoli, injuring about 15 Bangladeshi and three South Korean workers, Seoul’s foreign ministry said. —AFP