Violence in Libya Swells
via: The Wall Street Journal
By CHARLES LEVINSON and TAHANI KARRAR-LEWSLEY
CAIRO—Unrest in Libya spiraled into open deadly confrontation Monday, with an international umbrella group of Libyan opposition parties reporting that hundreds of thousands of people were on their way to the country's capital as government forces shelled protesters by air.
Amateur footage shows protests spreading to Libya's capital city while Gaddafi's son called on the nation to work with the regime to "create a new Libya".
Col. Gadhafi's 38-year-old son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi said in a defiant, rambling and confused speech early Monday morning on state television that his father, backed by the army, was leading the battle against those seeking to destroy Libya. "Moammar Gadhafi is in Tripoli leading the battle," the younger Gadhafi said in a bid to dispel rumors reported earlier by Arab satellite channels that the Libyan leader had fled the country for South America. Such reports, which couldn't be verified, continued Monday.
Residents in Tripoli said military troop transport helicopters were conducting frequent flights Monday afternoon, taking off from the east of Tripoli from the direction of the military airport there and flying southwest of the capital. Also, residents reported that several Antonov military cargo planes were flying over Tripoli, moving in the direction of the Mitiga military airbase on the east side of town.
Two residents in Tripoli said they saw black African soldiers deplane from the military transport flights, wearing blue and green special forces uniforms. It is unclear where the troops came from, the residents said.
The residents said crowds of people supporting Col. Gadhafi have entered the downtown Green Square and chanting for the need for stability in the country. "They have come in strong numbers. It doesn't feel safe there right now," said Walid, a Tripoli resident.
In the Gargash neighborhood of the capital, two buildings housing Libyan television channels—the Al Shababiya satellite channel and Libya's Channel 2 state television—have been looted and burned, these residents said. Those channels stopped transmission for a short time early Monday morning but came back on the air, presumably from different locations, according to residents.
Attempts to call Libyan telephones were unsuccessful late Monday. Al Jazeera news service reported that land and mobile communications from the country had been cut.
Human Rights Watch
said it had confirmed 233 deaths in protests so far.Tawfiq Alghazwani, a Dublin-based member of the National Congress of Libyan Opposition, an umbrella group of opponents of Mr. Gadhafi's regime, said he expected the death toll to rise considerably amid reports the government forces were shooting demonstrators from the ground and air.
"We are hearing Gadhafi's airplanes are shelling," said Mr. Alghazwani, who has based his reports on witness accounts from around Libya. He has reported heavy violence in the eastern part of the country, a traditional stronghold of the opposition.
Reuters
Still image from a video footage shows Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi gesturing to his supporters during a rally in Nalut, Feb. 19.
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Libya Protests Intensify
Associated Press
![[SB10001424052748704476604576158360734876694]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-MR011_0221li_D_20110221115209.jpg)
There were reports late Monday night that the city of Benghazi in the east had fallen firmly into protesters' hands, after the last army base in the city was stormed by protesters. Those reports couldn't be independently confirmed.
In his long speech, Seif Gadhafi pledged to begin political reforms in the country, including drafting a constitution and relaxing restrictions on press and civil society. But he focused the majority of his speech on blaming Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab and African countries for sending agents to Libya to destroy the country and steal its oil. He blamed Islamic radicals for much of the violence in the eastern half of the country
He warned Libyans that Mr. Gadhafi's ouster after 42 years in power would lead the country into civil war and a "spiral of violence worse than Iraq."
A senior U.S. administration official said the White House is analyzing the speech "to see what possibilities it contains for meaningful reform." The official added: "We will seek clarification from senior Libyan officials, as we continue to raise with them the need to avoid violence against peaceful protesters and respect universal rights."
The 40-minute, prerecorded speech came as his father's hold on the country appeared to be slipping away, with reports of violence and unrest in the capital Tripoli escalating and the hold of the police and army in the country seemed to be evaporating.
The Tripoli residents reported gunfire in the capital Monday and increasing numbers of protesters taking to the streets. The antiregime protests that swept about 10 cities across the country last week had been largely absent from Tripoli until Sunday, when thousands of protesters took to the streets in an attempt to take over the central Green Square from a crowd of regime supporters, according to the Tripoli residents.
Some were trying organize new protests Monday. "This morning, the situation is insecure, there are some people that are saying Green Square has no forces and people are trying to organize another demonstration in the afternoon," said Mohamed, a Tripoli resident.
Tripoli resident Walid said he and a handful of his friends had gone to the square on Sunday, chanting and protesting against the government. He said that by Sunday afternoon the crowd at the square was in the thousands and was mostly comprised of men under 30 years of age.
In the late afternoon, gunshots rang out in the crowd, he said. "No one could tell where the bullets were coming from. Bullets were flying in the air and bodies were falling," Walid said.
He said his friend saw two men standing next to him shot in the chest and killed.
Overnight, militia members without uniforms drove through the streets of the capital with heavy machine guns mounted on the backs of Land Cruiser sport-utility vehicles, residents said. Walid's neighbor, who heard the militiamen speak, said they spoke with accents like those of people from eastern Libya near the Egyptian border.
Walid said that the mood in Tripoli is turning against the government due to the bloodshed over the weekend. "We listened to Seif al-Islam but he was speaking only lies. We are at a point of no return. Now, they are killing Libyans. We don't trust him and his family. We've known them for 40 years. He [Col. Ghadhafi] would rather kill us than talk with us."
Protests also sprang up Sunday on the outskirts of Tripoli for the first time since the unrest began five days ago, according to residents. Though the protests were quickly quashed by security forces deployed in force throughout the capital, the spread of unrest to Mr. Gadhafi's center of power was a sign that demonstrations were gaining momentum and no longer confined to the country's eastern half.
Late Sunday, the country's Warfala tribe, one of the largest among Libya's population of 6.4 million, announced it was throwing its heft behind the protesters, suggesting momentum was tipping further against Mr. Gadhafi.
Associated Press
A video image broadcast on Libyan state television shows numerous supporters cheering Col. Gadhafi at an event in Tripoli Saturday.
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Libyan state TV broadcast images of burning buildings and blamed the "acts of sabotage and burning" on "foreign agents," echoing the attempts made by other Arab leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen to dismiss the domestic unrest.
Residents said it was the first time government media had acknowledged the growing protests, suggesting the violence was spreading to the point that the government had no choice but to address it directly.
The fiercest fighting appeared to be raging in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, on the country's northeast coast. Benghazi residents said some neighborhoods of the city had been consumed by full-fledged urban warfare between protesters and progovernment forces. Residents said pro-Gadhafi loyalists driving around in cars fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at anyone in the streets.
For the first time since protests started on Feb. 15, there were numerous reports that protesters had seized weapons caches from abandoned government bases and had gone on the offensive against government barracks.
"The soldiers have fled and the citizens have taken their weapons," one resident of Benghazi said in a telephone interview. "Citizens now have rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikovs and hand grenades. I can hear the bullets now and RPGs and people beeping their car horn in celebrations."
Fears of More Violence
Many residents and activists inside and outside Libya said they feared the coming days could see a sharp escalation in violence."There are really no constraints at all on what Gadhafi can do and we've reached the point where a lot of peaceful protesters are starting to arm themselves to do battle," said Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch following events in Libya.
A U.S. official said Sunday that the State Department
checked and couldn't confirm reports that Col. Gadhafi had left Libya. The official said the U.S. has been in regular contact with Libyan officials over the past two days, urging an end of the use of force. But the official said Washington hasn't been in direct contact with the Gadhafi family."We are continually assessing the situation on the ground and urging restraint," said the senior U.S. official. The highest level contact was Friday, the official said, when the State Department's Assistant Secretary of State for Near East affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, called Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa.
The U.S.'s ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, has been out of Tripoli for more than a month in the wake of the leaking of diplomatic cables by the Website WikiLeaks. In one of the cables, Mr. Cretz wrote to the State Department about what he described as Col. Gadhafi's erratic behavior, drawing a rebuke from the Libyan government. U.S. officials said Mr. Cretz was recalled, in part, due to concerns about his security in Tripoli.
Dirk Vandewalle, an expert on Libya's politics and history at Dartmouth College
, said that the government's security forces "are known to be very vicious.""No mater how high the human cost, they know they have to put these demonstrations down, because if they fail, they're the ones that will pay the highest price," he said. "They have absolutely nothing to lose."
The country's eastern half, of which Benghazi is the hub, has a long history of resistance to outsiders and of friction with Mr. Gadhafi's government in Tripoli.
Since taking power in a coup in 1969, Mr. Gadhafi has sidelined the region's tribes in favor of his own Qatatfa tribe in the competition for government posts. Though much of the country's oil wealth is in the east, the territory sees a disproportionately low share of state investment and resources.
The current unrest traces its roots back to an uprising by student Islamists in the 1990s that Mr. Gadhafi viciously suppressed. Mr. Gadhafi deployed the army's feared second brigade, commanded by one of his sons, Khamis, against the students. Those who weren't killed in the ensuing mayhem were thrown in jail, many of them in Tripoli's Abu Salim Prison.
About a year later, in 1996, prisoners at Abu Salim, many of whom were from Benghazi, launched an uprising. The regime took no mercy on the prison rebels. The ensuing bombardment left 1,200 prisoners dead, according to Human Rights Watch.
Ever since, the "Abu Salim massacre," as it is known to many Libyans, has been a rallying cry for activists and opposition in Libya, and a thorn in the regime's side.
The protests now shaking the country first flared outside Benghazi's courthouse on Feb. 15 after security forces arrested two outspoken members of the families of victims of the Abu Salim incident in 1996, as well as a human-rights lawyer, pushing their demands for compensation from the government, according to human-rights activists.
The early days of protest saw scattered violence. On Saturday, the violence escalated dramatically, according to residents of Benghazi and human-rights activists. Residents finished burying one of the early victims of the protests in Benghazi. As they marched from the graveyard and neared an army base in downtown Benghazi, soldiers opened fire with machine guns, according to numerous accounts from residents.
"It's like a guerrilla war," a female resident of Benghazi said Sunday morning. "There is a battle going on, and sometimes one part is controlled by the protesters, and sometimes other parts are. There are corpses in the street."
On Sunday, several residents said the base appeared to be the last bastion where government forces were concentrated in Benghazi.
"Neither side has complete control of Benghazi," said a student in Benghazi who would identify himself only as Abdullah. He said the government had cut electricity in parts of the city. He said he had seen 13 dead bodies in just one part of the city.
The Internet remains down in most of the country after the government shut down servers early Saturday morning, according to Renesys, an Internet access watchdog. Journalists were banned from entering the country or reporting on events, making it impossible to confirm many of the reports from residents.
Residents reached by phone were gripped by fear, unwilling to give their names over the telephone for fear that the government was monitoring phone calls. A Libyan journalist in Tripoli said some of his colleagues who had spoken with Arab TV stations had been arrested within minutes of speaking on air.
Oil is at the heart of the Libyan economy. The oil sector contributes about 95% of export earnings and 60% of public-sector wages, according to economists. According to the 2008 BP Statistical Energy Survey, Libya had proven oil reserves of 41.464 billion barrels at the end of 2007, or 3.34% of the world's reserves.
—Margaret Coker, Adam Entous and Jay Solomon contributed to this article. Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com
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