Gaddafi flees Tripoli as protesters set the Libyan parliament building alight
Popular fury: Government buildings have been set ablaze by anti-regime protesters in Tripoli.
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.
Defiant: Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, said he would would enforce security at any price as unrest continues.
Massacre: More than 300 pro-democracy demonstrators have been killed in Libya.
Mass movement: Protesters assemble in Benghazi as the fighting continues.
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’.
More than 300 victims were massacred – many by foreign mercenaries – during the government crackdown in Libya’s second city, Benghazi.
Protesters were gunned down in the streets, with reports that helicopter gunships and snipers were used to suppress the uprising.
The state TV headquarters in the capital Tripoli were also damaged during protests on Sunday while the AFP news agency reported several public buildings had been set alight.
Al Jazeera television quoted medical sources as saying 61 people had been killed in the latest protests in Tripoli.
It said security forces were looting banks and other government institutions in Tripoli, and protesters had broken into several police stations and wrecked them.
As the dust settles: Libyan protesters celebrated in the streets of Benghazi on Monday, claiming control of the country's second largest city after bloody fighting.
Taking power: Benghazi residents stand on a task inside a security forces compound.
Uprising: Libyans brandish a pre-Gadhafi era national flag after fighting in Benghazi.
United in opposition: Protesters chant against the regime in Benghazi.
The building where the General People’s Congress, or parliament, meets when it is in session in Tripoli was on fire on Monday morning while demonstrators also set light to the headquarters of the Olympic committee.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the dictator’s son, gave a defiant address on state television last night saying his family’s ‘spirits are high’ and warning: ‘We will eradicate them [enemies] all’.
He said Libya’s oil reserves would be ‘burned by thugs, criminals, gangs and tribes’ and said the populace would be left in poverty.
Libyan protesters and security forces battled for control of Tripoli’s city centre overnight, with snipers opening fire and Muammar Gaddafi supporters shooting from speeding vehicles, witnesses have said.
The protests appear to be the heaviest in Libya’s capital after days of deadly clashes in eastern cities.
Three witnesses say protesters moved into Tripoli’s central Green Square and nearby squares last night. Plain-clothes security forces and militiamen attacked in clashes that lasted until dawn.
One witness said snipers opened fire from rooftops. Two others said gunmen in vehicles with photos of Col Gaddafi sped through, opening fire and running people over. The witnesses reported seeing casualties, but the number could not be confirmed.
It has also been reported that 17 were wounded when Libyans stormed a South Korean-operated construction site 18 miles from the capital, with two Bangladeshi workers stabbed.
Output at one of the country’s oil fields was reported to have been stopped by a workers’ strike and some European oil companies withdrew expatriate workers and suspended operations.
With autocratic governments already toppled by popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, there was a sense that Gaddafi’s iron grip was being severely tested.
‘Libya is the most likely candidate for civil war because the government has lost control over part of its own territory,’ said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar.
In the eastern city of Benghazi, protesters appeared to be largely in control after forcing troops and police to retreat to a compound. Government buildings were set ablaze and ransacked.
‘People here in Benghazi are laughing at what he is saying. It is the same old story (on promised reform) and nobody believes what he says,’ a lawyer in Libya’s second city told the BBC after watching Saif al-Islam’s speech.
‘Youths with weapons are in charge of the city. There are no security forces anywhere,’ University of Benghazi professor Hanaa Elgallal told Al Jazeera International television.
Salahuddin Abdullah, a self-described protest organiser, said: ‘In Benghazi there is celebration and euphoria … The city is no longer under military control. It is completely under demonstrators’ control.’
In Al Bayda, a town about 200 km (125 miles) from Benghazi, which was the scene of deadly clashes last week between protesters and security forces, a resident told Reuters protesters were also in command.
A nation in flux: An undated image from the recent protests in Benghazi.
Firepower: Guns and rocket grenades on the streets of Benghazi yesterday.
Iron fist: Colonel Gaddafi, appearing yesterday on state television, is accused of ordering the slaughter of his own people.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, as he flew into Egypt on a surprise visit, launched an angry attack on thetreatment of protesters in Libya.
‘Our message, as it has been throughout this – I think we have been extremely consistent in saying that the response to the aspirations people are showing on the streets of these countries must be one of reform not repression,’ he said.
‘We can see what is happening in Libya which completely appalling and unacceptable as the regime is using the most vicious forms of repression against people who want to see that country – which is one of the most closed and one of the most autocratic – make progress.
‘The response they have shown has been quite appalling.’
The worst unrest of Gaddafi’s 41-year rule comes seven years after Tony Blair’s controversial Deal in the Desert, when the Labour Prime Minister ushered Libya in from the cold in exchange for billions in British business deals.
Britain has faced growing condemnation over its courting of Gaddafi after the Libyan dictator ordered the slaughter of hundreds of his own people.
The United Nations and the U.S. Ambassador to London questioned the UK’s cosy trade links with Tripoli yesterday.
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/02/gaddafi-flees-tripoli-as-protesters-set-the-libyan-parliament-building-alight/
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/02/gaddafi-flees-tripoli-as-protesters-set-the-libyan-parliament-building-alight/
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