Revolution In Libya -- News Updates
Col Muammar Gaddafi's last stronghold was plunged into violence last night after pro-regime gunmen opened fire on thousands of protesters who tried to take to the streets after Friday prayers.
Despite dire warnings and a heavy security presence, including a ring of tanks around the city, marches began across the city as the swelling opposition movement attempted a final push against their leader.
But according to numerous reports from the city, a pro-Gaddafi militia, possibly the Revolutionary Guards, and police started firing directly at the protesters.
Supporters of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi chant slogans in the Green Square, Tripoli Photo: AP
According to one unconfirmed report by a resident five people were killed in the district of Janzour, where there has been a particularly heavy security presence. Other reports said three people had been killed near Green Square in the city centre, and a fourth in the district of Fashloum.
"There are all kind of bullets," said one of many callers to news agencies, with the sound of firing in the background.
With most of the east of the country and several coastal cities in the west under rebel control, the area under uninterrrupted government command has shrunk to an area around the capital, along with some major roads.
In a cruel blow to the regime, Mitiga air base outside the capital, a military-civilian complex most famous in the West as the place where Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the accused Lockerbie bomber, touched down on his return from a Scottish prison 18 months ago, said it had switched sides.
The airfield was the base of operations for jets that were alleged to have fired on protesters earlier in the week.
The shootings yesterday had been predicted. "Thousands are still prepared to defy Gaddafi by taking to the streets today," said one resident of the suburb of Tajoura earlier. "The time for change has come. The dictator has to step down.
"We know he has ordered his troops to shoot on sight, but we are ready."
Other residents confirmed reports that regime forces were trying to clear away the evidence of the wave of killing in Tripoli earlier in the week.
One resident told CBS news network that he saw 62 bodies in Green Square after violence on Tuesday but that the bodies were now being removed to an unknown location. Forces were even killing the wounded in hospital, he said.
"They go in with guns into hospitals," he said. "They take the bodies that are dead. In some hospitals, they have shot the wounded. This is true."
The regime's remaining leaders are now concentrated in Tripoli, with some desert cities still presumed to be in government hands. Troops attacked rebel-held towns such as Zawiya to the west and Misurata to the east on Thursday, but were unable to subdue them.
Members of the regime continued to go over to the opposition, after Col Gaddafi's cousin and close aide, Ahmed Gaddaf Al-Dam said he was defecting on Thursday night. On Friday, it was the turn of the chief prosecutor, Abdulrahman al-Abar, to say he was quitting in protest at the "massacres and bloodshed".
The Libyan ambassador to France also gave up his embassy to the opposition, who raised the pre-Gaddafi national flag, while the last government spokesman at the United Nations in Geneva announced his support for the rebels in public, to a standing ovation from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
During the afternoon session, he stood up and asked for a minute's silence for victims of the fighting. He then read a chapter of the Koran, and said: "The young people in my country today, 100 years after the Italian fascist invasion of Libya, are today with their blood writing a new chapter in the history of struggle and resistance.
"Glory forever to the martyrs, victory forever to the heroic people of Libya. Peoples remain while people pass away."
After decades of living under oppressive dictatorships, the people of the Arab world are rising up to stake their claim to democracy. Inside the historic popular upheaval that began in Tunisia and is spreading to Egypt and across the vital region
A Revolutionary Committee office, near Green Square, is burned during demonstrations in Tripoli, Libya.
On Tuesday, Feb. 22, I woke up to the scrap-metal sound of a Kalashnikov outside my window. I looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. For three years, I lived in Libya as the only accredited western journalist in the country. By Wednesday, I would leave a city that was no longer itself.
This is how it all began to change. The news of the Feb. 15 uprising in Benghazi and Cyrenaica, hundreds of miles to the east, had trickled into the capital — as did accounts of the regime's attempts to crush it. We journalists have always been under tight control in Libya. But just a few days before the uprising in Tripoli began, it got a little tighter. I had been taken in by plainclothes security forces — a kind of warning. They blocked my cell phone number and did the same to three other colleagues. (See TIME's pictures of the turmoil in Cairo.)
On Saturday, Feb. 19, a day before the rebellion reached the capital, I met a Libyan friend who works for a foreign diplomatic mission. She was stocking food supplies. She was afraid. "Since Benghazi and Cyrenaica are at war," she tells me, "Tripoli has become a place where they look at you with suspicion. Nobody knows which side to be on. Your neighbor could become your executioner." Then, with tears in her eyes, she told me about two children she knew, aged 11 and 13, killed in Benghazi.
I called friends, sources. I wanted to know how they were, what they thought would happen. They were all afraid, locked in their homes, waiting. Then I got a call from A., a police officer I'd known for three years. He told me of six inmates killed in al-Jadaida prison in Tripoli. They were from Benghazi. I asked, "Was it retaliation against their families or an attempt to quell a revolt?" He did not answer. He was clearly a cop who had passed to the other side, a dissident. He was afraid, yet determined, and when I told him to be careful he gave me an answer I will never forget: "This is the blood we have to shed for our freedom." I too began to fear. (See "Tripoli on Lockdown.")
Then, the telephone company cut off communications completely. On Sunday night, the fighting began. About 3,000 people from the surrounding towns flocked to the center of Tripoli. They set fire to cars and garbage cans, and burned the police posts that lined the street. There were shouts, and the sound of horns. At about midnight, Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's "reformist" son, gave a speech. It captured everybody's attention, but disappointed those who believed in him, who thought he embodied the possibility of democratic change.
I took refuge at the house of a friend. From its roof, I watched more anti-Gaddafi demonstrators arrive late Monday afternoon. They came down from the surrounding cities, members of clans that have long harbored anti-regime sentiments. In the place of the green flag of Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, they waved white banners and shouted slogans in Arabic. But before they came, I saw helicopters pass, transporting troops, African mercenaries paid by the regime to do its dirty work.
For three nights, it would be urban guerilla warfare, a battle devoid of images, unreported, obscured by a regime that has no love for journalists or those who collaborate with them. It was a battle recounted in the sound of gun shots and of the trails of fire left by the passing demonstrators. (Comment on this story.)
By then, it was clear to everyone: Tripoli was in chaos. Between supporters and protesters, police and army, security forces and mercenaries, nobody knew who to believe. For three mornings, the first rays of sun chased away the shadows of nocturnal combatants, men armed with rifles patrolling the neighborhoods in search of anti-Gaddafi demonstrators. With first light, there was our race to the store for supplies. At night, there was apprehension as loyalists hunted those opposing the regime as Gaddafi brutally reimposed control.
Within 48 hours of the fighting, thousands of expatriates began leaving the capital. Pouring into the airport, they occupied every possible space, parking lots, roads, sidewalks. Inside was a carpet of human fear. Among them were Tunisians, Egyptians, Algerians, Syrians, nationalities accused by Gaddafi's supporters of having been the spark that ignited the revolt in Libya. Together with them are many Asian workers employed in the construction yards, which have been attacked and raided.
Then, there are the Europeans like myself. Organized in groups by our embassies and shuttled through the city's impromptu checkpoints to the airport, we were evacuated to our home countries. Italy even sent a charter flight to take us back. I took my place in a large group of people waiting to depart. Staying in Libya was no longer safe. When my plane finaly took off, the applause was liberating.
Francesca Spinola is a correspondent for ANSA, the Italian news agency. Based in Libya since July 2008, she covers the Mediterranean and Africa and has been published in L'Espresso and La Repubblica, and has appeared on the news network France24
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