BENGHAZI, Libya — Foreign mercenaries and Libyan militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi tried to roll back the uprising against his rule that has advanced closer to his stronghold in Tripoli, attacking two nearby cities in battles that killed at least 17 people.
But rebels made new gains, seizing a military air base, as Gadhafi blamed Osama bin Laden for the upheaval.
The worst bloodshed was in Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital, Tripoli. An army unit loyal to Gadhafi opened fire with automatic weapons on a mosque where residents - some armed with hunting rifles for protection - had been holding a sit-in to support protesters in the capital, a witness said.
The troops blasted the mosque’s minaret with an anti-aircraft gun. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as about 150 wounded. A Libyan news website, Qureyna, put the death toll at 23 and said many of the wounded could not reach hospitals because of shooting by “security forces and mercenaries.”
An exiled Libyan whohad been in contact with members of the opposition in Zawiya said the battle lasted four hours and had killed at least 100, The New York Times reported.
A day earlier, an envoy from Gadhafi had come to the city from Tripoli and warned the protesters: “Either leave or you will see a massacre,” the witness said. On Tuesday night, Gadhafi called on his supporters to hunt down opponents in their homes.
Zawiya, a key city close to an oil port and refineries, is the nearest population center to Tripoli to fall into the hands of the anti-Gadhafi rebellion that began Feb. 15. Hundreds have died in the unrest.
http://www.arkansas…">Protests rock Libya
Most of the eastern half of Libya has already broken away, and diplomats, ministers and even a high-ranking cousin have abandoned Gadhafi, who has ruled Libya for 41 years. He is still believed to be firmly in control of only the capital, some towns around it, the far desert south and parts of Libya’s sparsely populated center.
Gadhafi’s crackdown has been the harshest by any Arab leader in the wave of protests that has swept the Middle East in the past month, toppling the presidents of Libya’s neighbors Egypt and Tunisia.The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll in Libya at nearly 300, according to a partial count. Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed were “credible.”
Hours after the attack in Zawiya, Gadhafi called state TV and in a rambling speech expressed condolences for the dead but then angrily scolded the city’s residents for siding with the uprising.
He blamed the revolt on bin Laden and teenagers hopped up on hallucinogenic pills given to them “in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe.”
“Shame on you, people of Zawiya, control your children,” he said. “They are loyal to bin Laden,” he said of those involved in the uprising. “What do you have to do with bin Laden, people of Zawiya? They are exploiting young people ... I insist it is bin Laden.”
Thousands massed in Zawiya’s main Martyrs Square by the Souq Mosque after the attack, shouting for Gadhafi to “leave, leave,” the witness said. “People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets,” he said.
In the latest blow to the Libyan leader, a cousin who is one of his closest aides, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, announced that he has defected to Egypt in protest against the regime’s bloody crackdown,denouncing what he called “grave violations to human rights and human and international laws.”
Gadhaf al-Dam is one of the highest-level defections to hit the regime so far, after many ambassadors around the world, the justice minister and the interior minister all sided with the protesters. Gadhaf al-Dam belonged to Gadhafi’s inner circle, served as his liaison with Egypt and frequently appeared by his side.
The regime’s other attempt to take back lost territory came east of Tripoli. Pro-Gadhafi militiamen - a mix of Libyans and foreign mercenaries - assaulted a small airport outside Libya’s third-largest city, Misrata, about 120 miles from the capital.
Militiamen with rocket propelled grenades and mortar rounds peppered a line of government opponents who were guarding the airport, some armed with rifles, said one of the rebels who was involved in the battle.
During the fighting, the airport’s defenders seized ananti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them, he said.
At the same time, officers from an air force school near the airport mutinied and, along with residents, overwhelmed an adjacent military air base near where Gadhafi loyalists were holed up, a medical official at the base said. The air force personnel disabled fighter jets at the base to prevent them from being used against the uprising, he said.
The medical official said seven people were killed in the fighting at the airport - six from the opposition camp and one from the attackers - and 50 were wounded, including a six-year-old girl and her 11-year-old sister.
“Now Misrata is totally under control of the people, but we are worried because we are squeezed between Sirte and Tripoli, which are strongholds of Gadhafi,” he said.
The doctor, medical officials and witnesses around Libya spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Gadhafi’s crackdown has so far helped him maintain control of Tripoli, home to about a third of Libya’s population of 6 million. But the uprising has divided the country and raised the specter of civil war.
In cities across the east, anti-Gadhafi forces rose up and overwhelmed government buildings and army bases, joined in many cases by local army units that joined the uprising. In those cities, tribal leaders, residents and military officers have formed local administrations, passing out weapons looted from the security forces’ arsenals.
They now control territory from the Egyptian border in the east, across nearly half of Libya’s 1,000-mile Mediterranean coast to the key oil port of Breqa, about 440 miles east of Tripoli.
Libyan Parliament Speaker Mohammed Abul-Qassimal-Zwai, asked whether the government planned to send relief to the rebel-controlled east, told reporters in Tripoli: “We cannot supply these areas because they are chaotic. Police stations have been attacked.”
The Swiss government on Thursday ordered a freeze of any assets in Switzerland belonging to Gadhafi. The European Union pushed for Libya to be suspended from the U.N.’s top human-rights body over possible crimes against humanity and for the U.N. Security Council to approve a probe into “gross and systematic violations of human rights by the Libyan authorities.”
U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the crackdown “is outrageous and it is unacceptable,” and he directed his administration to prepare a full range of options, including possible sanctions that could freeze the assets of and ban travel to the U.S. by Libyan officials.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the European Union cutting off economic ties.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told Gadhafi onThursday to give his people a chance at democracy, while apologizing to Britons for delays in bringing them home from the violence racking the country.
“My question right now would be to Col. Gadhafi, ‘What on earth do you think you are doing? Stop it,’” Cameron said in a question-and-answer-session on Al-Jazeera television broadcast on YouTube on Thursday. “Give your people a chance of freedom, democracy and a better future, which is what everyone in this world wants and desires.”
Two ships braved churning seas Thursday to whisk some 4,500 Chinese workers away from Libya to the island of Crete, while rough weather farther west in the Mediterranean left hundreds of Americans stranded on a ferry in Tripoli.
As tens of thousands of foreigners sought to flee fighting in Libya, European countries scrambled to send more ships and military planes to the North African nation and Britain considered whether to send in its military to rescue stranded oil workers.
Late Thursday night in Tajoura, a vehicle with armed men drove by a group of protesters gathering near a clinic and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, a witness said. Residents of Tajoura, which has seen near-daily clashes, have also hoisted the old monarchy flag up in a neighborhood square as a show of defiance against the regime.
Those who have joined the uprising dismissed his claim that it was led by al-Qaida.
“These are all lies,” said Gadhafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who has sided with the opposition. “There are no al-Qaida, no terrorist organizations.” Information for this article was contributed by Paul Schemm, Sarah El Deeb, Maggie Michael, Bassem Mroue, Suzan Fraser and Thanassis Stavrakis of The Associated Press and AP writers across Europe; by Kareem Fahim, David D. Kirkpatrick, Sharon Otterman, Mona El-Naggar and Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times; and by Kitty Donaldson, Robert Hutton and Thomas Penny of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/25/2011