TOBRUK, Libya — Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi vowed Tuesday to “die as a martyr” in his country rather than surrender power, as he sought to rally supporters against a growing popular uprising that has taken over much of eastern Libya and won the backing of some army units and government officials.
In a speech in the capital, Tripoli, the army colonel who has ruled the North African nation for nearly 42 years appealed to supporters to take to the streets by the millions “in order to cleanse Libya, home by home, village by village,” of what he described as a misguided movement inspired by foreigners.
He denounced the anti-government protesters as“greasy rats” and “drug-fueled mice” who deserve to be executed.
“These gangs are cockroaches,” he said. “They’re nothing. They’re not 1 percent of the Libyan people.”
Interior Minister Abdel Fattah Younis, the commander of a powerful commando brigade and one of Gadhafi’s closest associates, announced in the protester held city of Benghazi that he was joining the revolt and urged other military units to do the same, The Associated Press reported.
Gadhafi’s justice minister also has joined the revolt, along with several ambassadors, including the Libyan ambassador to the United States.
In the eastern cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, protesters raised the pre-Gadhafi flag of Libya’s monarchy on public buildings.
The move away from Gadhafi by police, border guards and soldiers was evident on Libya’s eastern border with Egypt, where reporters were welcomed into the country Tuesday without visa procedures or passport controls.
Young defectors showed cell-phone videos of repression in Baida and Benghazi, where they said African “mercenaries” hired by Gadhafi shot down scores of men, women and children. They told of rapes, looting and bloody killings over the past week.
http://www.arkansas…">Protests rock Mideast
Most of the soldiers said they left their posts when a relative or neighbor was killed in what they described as massacres of demonstrators in eastern towns and the capital after a popular revolt that started Feb. 15.
Attiya el-Sabr, 32, a border guard, said he switched sides Feb. 17 after his brother-in-law was shot in Tobruk.
“The killing of innocents by the thousands” prompted his decision, he said. “Libya is in a security vacuum, and it’s uncontrolled now. The civilian people protect the area.”
Some army units have helped the protesters claim control of nearly the entire eastern half of Libya’s 1,000-mile Mediterranean coast, an area that includes several major oil fields, the AP said.
Younis, who had backed the 1969 coup that raised Gadhafi to power, said in a statement that he has resigned all of his posts out of conviction that the protesters have “just demands.”
Among the diplomats who also have resigned was Ali al-Essawi, the Libyan ambassador to India. He said Tuesday that the government had used fighter jets to bomb civilians and hired foreign mercenaries to shoot protesters.
Human Rights Watch said nearly 300 people have been killed, according to a partial count. Some of the victims were reportedly slain in a rampage by pro-Gadhafi militiamen who shot from vehicles at people in the streets and in their homes.
The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting that ended with a statement condemning the crackdown, expressing “grave concern” and calling for an “immediate end to the violence” and steps to address the legitimate demands of the Libyan people.
Additionally, the Arab League suspended Libya as a member.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the violence and demanded that the Libyan government end it. She told reporters Tuesday at the State Department that the “entire international community” agrees that “the violence must stop and the government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of all of its citizens.”
On Tuesday night, the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli announced that it had chartered a ferry to take U.S. citizens to Malta today.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Gadhafi’s speech “very, very appalling” and said it amounted to “declaring war on his own people.”
In his speech in Tripoli, Gadhafi urged supporters to “get out of your homes and fill the streets,” and he exhorted them to “attack” those who he said wanted to “destroy Libya.” He insisted that he cannot resign, since he has no official title. In a televised appearance earlier Tuesday, the erratic ruler held an umbrella out the door of a car and told an interviewer, “I am here to show that I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela.”
In Benghazi, residents said Libya’s second-largest city was under the control of the protesters and that the streets were calm Tuesday. Military leaders, police and other security units there appeared to be supporting the opposition.Citizens were in the streets protecting their neighborhoods, and banks and schools were expected to reopen in the next few days.
There was a collective sense of euphoria in Benghazi, residents said in telephone interviews. They described a sense that they had triumphed over Gadhafi and were no longer under his thumb. Some were no longer afraid to give their names in interviews.
“This is free Libya,” said Amal Bugaigis, 50, a lawyer. “Security forces and the people in Benghazi are together.We are now one. ... There is no more Gadhafi.”
She said she was no longer afraid of Gadhafi and he no longer had any influence among the people and security forces in the city of more than 670,000 people.
In Tripoli, there were conflicting reports on the situation. Some residents described their neighborhoods as war zones, with foreign mercenaries and Gadhafi loyalists driving around in sport utility vehicles and military trucks, shooting protesters or firing guns in the air. They said many government buildings were set on fire, while security forces protected the national television station, and that many residents remained gripped by fear, locked inside their houses.
Other inhabitants of the capital said their neighborhoods were calm and that they had not experienced any attacks by warplanes or helicopter gunships.
As the longtime leader’s speech was being broadcast, Libyan national television showed images of hundreds of Gadhafi supporters in the capital’s central Green Square waving flags. Residents said the supporters took over the square late Monday after Gadhafi’s militias opened fire on anti-government protesters there.
In his disjointed, fistpounding speech, Gadhafi, 68, alleged that youthful demonstrators against his regime were “manipulated” by people from neighboring Tunisia, where protests last month chased the entrenched president from power.
He showed no regret for his security forces’ violent crackdown against the demonstrators, at one point reading from a green-covered book that listed the death penalty for various crimes against the state.
“It is not possible that I leave this place,” Gadhafi said. “I will die as a martyr at the end.” He described himself as “a fighter, a revolutionary from tents,” but denied responsibility for the violence even as he issued a warning.
“I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired,” he said. “When I do, everything will burn.”
Wearing a brown turban and cloak, Gadhafi spoke from the lobby of his bombed-out former residence, which was struck in a 1986 airstrike by U.S. and British warplanes in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque by Libyan agents.
Greek passenger ships and a British warship were being dispatched to the Libyan coast to evacuate Europeans and thousands of Chinese citizens, news services reported. The Greek government said 15,000 Chinese evacuees would be taken to the island of Crete so they could begin their journey home. The British government was also seeking to arrange a charter flight to aid in the evacuations.
In Washington, Ali Suleiman Aujali, Libya’s ambassador to the United States, announced that he had decided to “resign from serving the current dictatorship.” He called on the United States to “raise its voice very strongly” to help oust Gadhafi.
Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, accused Gadhafi of killing his own people and urged the international community to act against the regime.
In Triopli, residents reported that a heavy overnight rain had calmed the situation down. But the capital remained chaotic and volatile, with residents saying a new round of mass demonstrations was planned.
It was not immediately possible to verify the scope or precise details of the events unfolding in Libya. Foreign journalists have been denied visas, and Internet access, phone service and other forms of communications have been mostly cut.
But in interviews with Libyan residents, exiles and diplomats, as well as in videos posted online, a picture unfolded of a nation in the throes of the bloodiest revolution to emerge so far from the populist upheavals sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa.
Information for this article was contributed by Leila Fadel, Sudarsan Raghavan, William Branigin, Debbi Wilgoren, Mary Beth Sheridan, Colum Lynch and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; by Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times; by Maggie Michael, Sarah El Deeb, Hamza Hendawi, Edith M. Lederer, Colleen Barry, Matthew Lee, John Heilprin and Barbara Whitaker of The Associated Press and by Kareem Fahim, David D. Kirkpatrick, Sharon Otterman, Mona El-Naggar, Neil MacFarquhar and Liam Stack of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/23/2011