LIBYA’S UPRISING reached the heart of Tripoli yesterday as anti-regime demonstrators defied a security clampdown to demand Col Muammar Gadafy’s overthrow amid hopes that key military units in the west of the country would defect.
Gunmen in cars reportedly opened fire on protesters as they streamed out of mosques after Friday prayers. Witnesses described shooting in streets near Green Square in the heart of the city. Information remained patchy, confused and sometimes contradictory, but up to seven people were reported shot dead in Janzour, Fashlum, Bin Ashour, Zawiyat al-Dahmani and other urban areas. “Security forces fired indiscriminately on the demonstrators,” said one resident.
Later, however, Col Gadafy appeared in Green Square to give another angry and defiant speech to crowds of supporters waving banners and cheering him – a message that he is alive and in control – as he pledged to “open up the arsenals”.
Libyan state television, trying hard to maintain an air of normality in the virtual absence of independent media, denied the reports of deaths. Foreign journalists escorted into town from the airport by loyalists were confined to their hotels.
Ominously, there were claims by opposition sources that missing people were being held as human shields in the sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound where Gadafy lives and works.
Libyan exiles said that a reported rebellion by military personnel at Tripoli’s Mitiga airbase was linked to calls by airforce officers in the liberated eastern city of Benghazi to come out against the regime. Analysts believe defections from the military are likely to prove more decisive than actual fighting as the nine-day uprising enters what may be its final phase.
The Libyan airforce, which is dominated by members of the Megarha tribe, has traditionally been considered one of Gadafy’s most loyal supporters.
Army commanders in the east who have renounced Gadafy’s leadership have said that commanders in the west are now beginning to turn against him.
The loss of Mitiga would be a grave blow. The base, next to a civilian airport, is symbolically important as the former Wheelus base used by the US airforce before the 1969 revolution. A correspondent for Italy’s Ansa news agency reported that it was surrounded by troops and police.
Foreign diplomats monitoring Libyan developments said there were signs that more damaging high-level military and civilian defections may be imminent. Several key ministers and generals have abandoned Gadafy in the last few days.
Fighting was also reported in al-Zawiya, 50km west of Tripoli and in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city, to the east along the Mediterranean coast. Protesters were also said to be marching towards the capital from Tajura, an outlying suburb.
Witnesses spoke of pro-regime units equipped with tanks and automatic rifles and wounded people being removed from hospitals to unknown destinations.
It is clear that the rebellion is strengthening its hold in the east but the balance of forces around the capital and in the west remains unclear.
Col Gadafy’s position in Tripoli could depend in part on the performance of an elite unit led by one of his sons, Khamis, whose 32nd Brigade is one of three well-equipped regime-protection units that total 10,000 men. – (Guardian service)