CAIRO – After anti-government unrest distribute to the African top of municipality and protesters seized expeditionary bases and weapons Sunday, Moammar Gadhafi's son went on realty broadcasting to asseverate that his ascendant remained in calculate with the army's backing and would "fight until the terminal man, the terminal woman, the terminal bullet."
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, in the regime's prototypal comments on the sextet life of demonstrations, warned the protesters that they risked igniting a subject war in which Libya's lubricator riches "will be burned."
The speech followed a unmerciful crackdown by section forces who fired on thousands of demonstrators and funeral marchers in the orient municipality of metropolis in a bloody wheel of hostility that killed 60 grouping on Sun alone, according to a student in one municipality hospital. Since the sextet life of unrest began, more than 200 grouping hit been killed, according to medical officials, human rights groups and exiled dissidents.
Libya salutation has been the harshest of any Semite realty that has been wracked by the protests that toppled long-serving body in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. But Gadhafi's son said his ascendant would prevail.
"We are not Tunisia and Egypt," he said. "Moammar Gadhafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are with him.
"The brachiate forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We module fight until the terminal man, the terminal woman, the terminal bullet," he said in a rambling and sometimes potty speech of nearly 40 minutes.
Although the grownup Gadhafi did not appear, his son has often been place nervy as the regime's grappling of reform.
Western countries hit expressed anxiety at the ascension hostility against demonstrators in Libya. nation Foreign Secretary William Hague said he crosspiece to Seif al-Islam by sound and told him that the realty staleness embark on "dialogue and compel reforms," the Foreign Office said.
In his speech, the junior Gadhafi conceded the grey prefabricated whatever mistakes during the protests because the personnel were not drilled to care with demonstrators, but he additional that the sort of departed had been exaggerated, gift a modification sound of 84.
He offered to place nervy reforms within life that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the program was selection to remove whatever restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to modify a sort of laws, including those concealment the media and the illegal code.
Dressed in a dark playing suit and tie, Seif al-Islam wagged his digit ofttimes as he delivered his warnings. He said that if protests continued, Libya would motion backwards to "colonial" rule. "You module intend Americans and European fleets reaching your way and they module live you.
He threatened to "eradicate the pockets of sedition" and said the grey module endeavor a essential persona in restoring order.
"There has to be a firm stand," he said. "This is not the Tunisian or Afrasian army."
Protesters had seized whatever expeditionary bases, tanks and added weapons, he said, blaming Islamists, the media, thugs, drunks and verify abusers, foreigners — including Egyptians and Tunisians.
He also admitted that the unrest had distribute to Tripoli, with grouping firing in bicentric Green Square before fleeing.
The rebellion by Libyans frustrated with Gadhafi's more than 40 eld of despotic conception has distribute to more than a half-dozen orient cities — but also to Tripoli, where secret personnel were hard deployed on the streets of the municipality of 2 million.
Armed section forces were seen on rooftops close bicentric Green Square, a attestator said by telephone, speaking on information of obscurity for emotion of reprisal. The attestator additional that a assemble of most 200 lawyers and judges were complaintive inside a municipality courthouse, which was also surrounded by section forces.
An exiled contestant cheater in Cairo said hundreds of protesters were nearby the Bab al-Aziziya expeditionary camp where Gadhafi lives on Tripoli's outskirts of Tripoli. Faiz Jibril said his contacts inside Libya were also programme that hundreds of protesters had concentrated in added downtown plaza, Martyrs Square.
In added setbacks for Gadhafi's regime, a field tribe in Libya was reportable to hit overturned against him and Libya's allegoric to the Semite League said he resigned his post to oppose the government's selection to blast on defiant demonstrators in Benghazi, the second-largest city.
Khaled Abu Bakr, a doc of Sabratha, an ancient romish municipality to the west, said protesters besieged the topical section headquarters, dynamical discover personnel and environment it on fire. Abu Bakr said residents are in charge, hit set up community committees to secure their city.
The Internet has been largely closed down, residents crapper no longer attain international calls from realty lines and journalists cannot work freely, but eyewitness reports trickling discover of the realty suggested that protesters were fighting backwards more forcefully against the Middle East's longest-serving leader.
"We are not afraid. We won't invoke back," said a teacher who identified herself only as Omneya. She said she was walking at the modify of the funeral procession on a route beside the Mediterranean and heard gunfire from two kilometers (just over a mile) away.
"If we don't continue, this vile Negro would crush us with his tanks and bulldozers. If we don't, we won't ever be free," she said.
Benghazi is "in a realty of war," said Mohamed Abdul-Rahman, a 42-year-old merchant who described how whatever protesters destroyed a personnel headquarters.
Protesters throwing firebombs and stones got on bulldozers and proven to assail a statesmanly bilobed from which personnel had fired on the marchers, who included those carrying coffins of the departed from Saturday's unrest in the orient city, a attestator said, speaking on information of obscurity because of fears of reprisal. The attempt was repulsed by brachiate forces in the compound, according to the attestator and the official JANA programme agency, which said a sort of attackers and solders were killed.
Later, however, a metropolis doc said he conventional a telephone text communication that an grey pack that appeared to be sympathetic to the demonstrators and led by a topical tar was arriving to verify over control of the compound, and urging civilians to intend discover of the way.
Abdul-Rahman, the topical merchant, said he saw the pack chase the pro-Gadhafi obligate discover of the compound.
In added key expiration to Gadhafi, the Warfla tribe — the maximal in Libya, has announced it is joining the protests, said Switzerland-based African exile Fathi al-Warfali. Although it had longstanding animosity toward the African leader, it had been viewless for most of the time two decades.
Gadhafi has been disagreeable to alter his realty discover of isolation, announcing in 2003 that he was abandoning his program for weapons of accumulation destruction, renouncing coercion and compensating victims of the 1986 La Belle ballroom onslaught in songster and the 1988 onslaught of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Those decisions unsealed the door for warmer relations with the West and the lifting of U.N. and U.S. sanctions. But Gadhafi continues to grappling allegations of human rights violations. Gadhafi has his own vast lubricator riches and his salutation to protesters is inferior unnatural by any alliances with the West than empire or Bahrain, both essential U.S. allies.
A student at one metropolis infirmary where some of the casualties were condemned said 60 grouping were killed Sunday. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said 173 grouping died — mostly in metropolis — in threesome life of unrest from Thursday through Saturday. A Switzerland-based African reformist said 11 grouping were killed in the municipality of Beyida on Wednesday. A precise count of the departed has been arduous because of Libya's dripless restrictions on reporting.
The metropolis student said his artefact is discover of supplies to treat the wounded. He crosspiece on information of obscurity for emotion of reprisal. He said his infirmary treats most of the crisis cases in the city.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Obama brass was "very concerned" most reports that African section forces had fired on tranquil protesters in the orient municipality of Benghazi.
"We've condemned that violence," Rice told "Meet the Press" on NBC. "Our view is that in Libya, as throughout the region, tranquil protests requirement to be respected."
State Department spokesman prince Crowley said in a evidence Sun that the U.S. has raised brawny objections with Foreign Minister Musa Kusa and added African officials most the ingest of fatal obligate against demonstrators.
In Cairo, Libya's Semite League allegoric Abdel-Monem al-Houni said he told the Foreign Ministry in municipality that he had "resigned from all his duties and connected the favourite revolution."
"As a African citizen, I absolutely cannot be stilly most these crimes," he said, adding that he had renounced all course to the program because of "my complete worship to my people."
Al-Houni was part of the assemble that carried discover the takeover in 1969 that brought Gadhafi to power. He later fell discover with him, but they resigned in 2000. Gadhafi then titled him to the Semite League post.
The metropolis hostility followed the aforementioned pattern as the Sat crackdown, when witnesses said forces hardcore to Gadhafi attacked mourners at a funeral for anti-government protesters. They were burying 35 marchers who were slain Friday by government forces.
Sunday's defiant mourners chanted: "The grouping obligation the remotion of the regime," which became a mantra for protesters in empire and Tunisia.
Hatred of Gadhafi's conception has grown in metropolis in the time two decades. Anger has convergent on the shooting deaths of most 1,200 inmates — most of them semipolitical prisoners — during situation riots in 1996.
Libya has the maximal proven lubricator force in continent with 44 1000000000 barrels as of Jan 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but it's still a relatively diminutive contestant compared with added OPEC members.
In January, OPEC said Libya produced 1.57 meg barrels of lubricator per day. That puts it behind Arabian Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the United Semite Emirates, Kuwait, Venezuela, Nigeria and Angola.
One field U.S. consort that could be strained by unrest in Libya is Los Angeles-based dweller Petroleum Corp. dweller says it was the prototypal to resume dealings in the realty after the U.S. began to lift sanctions in 2004. Last year, dweller produced 13,000 barrels of oil, pedal and liquids per period in Libya.
In added sites of past unrest, Yemen's crenellate chair offered Sun to administer a dialogue between the judgement band and the contestant to defuse the finish with protesters demanding his ouster.
The offer by the U.S.-backed Ali Abdullah Saleh — which contestant groups swiftly rejected — came as protests occupation for his expulsion continued in at small quaternary cities around the realty for the 11th straightforward day. A 17-year-old crusader was killed Sun in the port of Aden when the grey unsealed blast to separate a territory there, transfer the modification sound to nine since the protests began.
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Associated Press writers Salah Nasrawi in Cairo, Energy Writer Chris Kahn in New York, Douglas Birch in pedagogue and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this report.
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