Clampdown in Libyan capital as protests close in
Two pilots let their warplane crash in the desert, parachuting to safety, rather than bomb an opposition-held city.
The opposition said it had taken over Misrata, which would be the largest city in the western half in the country to fall into its hands. Clashes broke out over the past two days in the town of Sabratha, about 50 miles west of the capital, where the army and militiamen were trying to put down protesters who overwhelmed security headquarters and government buildings, a news website close to the government reported.
Two air force pilots parachuted from their Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jet and let it crash, rather than carry out orders to bomb opposition-held Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, the website Qureyna reported, citing an unidentified officer in the air force control room.
One of the pilots — identified by the report as Ali Omar Gadhafi — was from Gadhafi’s tribe, the Gadhadhfa, said Farag al-Maghrabi, a local resident who saw the pilots and the wreckage in a deserted area outside the key oil port of Breqa.
International outrage mounted after Gadhafi went on state TV Tuesday and in a fist-pounding speech called on his supporters to take to the streets to hunt down protesters. His retaliation has already been the harshest of any regime confronting anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East.
The UN’s top human rights official said a no-fly zone could be imposed over Libya to protect civilians from attacks by government aircraft. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said yesterday if unconfirmed reports of aerial attacks against civilians turned out to be true, “I think there’s an immediate need for that level of protection.”
The United States and the European Union vowed to consider sanctions against Libya for Moammar Gadhafi’s fierce crackdown on protesters, with the EU calling the attacks possible “crimes against humanity”.
“The continuing brutal and bloody repression against the Libyan civilian population is revolting,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, raising the possibility of cutting off all economic and business ties between the EU and Libya.
“The international community cannot remain a spectator to these massive violations of human rights.”
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney also condemned the attacks.
“The violence is abhorrent, it is completely unacceptable and the bloodshed must stop,” Carney said.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed in the violence in Libya were “credible” although he stressed information about casualties was incomplete. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at nearly 300.
In Tripoli, militiamen and Gadhafi supporters were roaming main streets, firing weapons in the air from time to time as they chanted “long live Gadhafi”. In many neighbourhoods, residents had set up watch groups to keep them out, barricading their streets with concrete blocks, metal and rocks, said a Tripoli activist.
Many were passing out fliers announcing a march by protesters on Tripoli on Friday, urging residents to take refuge in mosques in case violence erupts.
Gadhafi’s residence at Tripoli’s Aziziya Gates was guarded by loyalists, waving his picture and chanting slogans, along with a line of armed militiamen in vehicles, some masked, he said.
The radio station building downtown was also heavily fortified.
“Mercenaries are everywhere with weapons. You can’t open a window or door. Snipers hunt people,” said another resident, who said she had spent the last night in her home awake hearing gunfire outside.
“We are under siege, at the mercy of a man who is not a Muslim.”
But below the surface, protesters were organising, said the activist. At night, they fan out and spray-paint anti-Gadhafi graffiti or set fires near police stations, chanting “The people want the ouster of the regime,” before running at the approach of militiamen, he said.
A group of 60 intellectuals, judges, doctors and journalists linked to the protesters drew up a list of demands for the post-Gadhafi era, calling for a national assembly formed of representatives from each region to draw up a transitional government and write a constitution.
Libya’s upheaval, just over a week old, has shattered the hold of Gadhafi’s regime across much of the country.
Protesters claim to hold towns and cities along nearly the entire eastern half of the 1,000-mile Mediterranean coastline, from the Egyptian border.
At the Egyptian border, guards had fled, and local tribal elders have formed local committees to take their place.
“Welcome to the new Libya,” a graffiti spray-painted at the crossing proclaimed. Fawzy Ignashy, a former soldier, now in civilian clothes at the border, said that early in the protests, some commanders ordered troops to fire on protesters, but then tribal leaders stepped in and ordered them to stop.
“They did because they were from here. So the officers fled,” he said.
Protesters have claimed control all the way to the city of Ajdabiya, about 480 miles (800 kilometers) east of Tripoli, encroaching on the key oil fields around the Gulf of Sidra.
That has left Gadhafi’s power centered around Tripoli, in the far west and parts of the country’s centre. But that appeared to be weakening in parts.
The division of the country — and defection of some army units to the protesters — raises the possibility the opposition could try an assault on the capital.
