Qaddafi’s Militia Storms Key Town Controlled by Rebels
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
March 5, 2011
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TRIPOLI, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s militia stormed the rebels controlling the town of Zawiyah on Saturday morning in what two residents described as a “massacre.”
“I am watching neighbors dying unarmed in front of their homes,” one resident said in a telephone interview, with the sounds of heavy weapons and machine-gun fire in the background. The resident said the militias were using tanks and heavy artillery, attacking from both the east and west gates of the town. “I don’t know how many are being killed, but I know my neighborhood is being killed,” the resident said.
In a telephone interview a little more than three hours after the attack began, another resident said: “Everything is burning. We don’t know from which side they are shooting us — from the buildings or from the streets. People are falling everywhere.”
But four hours after the fighting began, two rebels said in phone interviews that after heavy casualties, the battle was over. They said they held the center of town, but a tight military siege made it impossible to enter or leave. It was impossible to determine the number of casualties in the latest fighting. The attack started about 6 a.m., a night after Colonel Qaddafi’s government promised to bring a group of foreign journalists to see that Zawiyah, just 30 miles outside the capital, was again secure in government control.
The assault followed a day of brazen counterattacks by Colonel Qaddafi’s militia, which battled rebel forces on two fronts on Friday, firing on unarmed protesters in front of international news media and leaving the rebels seeking his ouster in disarray.
The militia’s actions seemed likely to stir renewed debate over international intervention to limit Colonel Qaddafi’s use of military power against his own citizens, possibly by imposing a no-flight zone.
The latest siege of Zawiyah began on Friday, when the elite Khamis Brigade, a militia named for the Qaddafi son who commands it, surrounded the town and opened fire with mortars, machine guns and other heavy weapons, witnesses said, in two separate skirmishes.
The first was arguably provoked by rebels who tried to attack the better-equipped militia because it was blocking rebel supporters from entering the town, the witnesses said. But the second took aim at a group of unarmed protesters who attempted to march through the militia lines toward the capital.
A rebel making a count at the Zawiyah hospital said that at least 35 rebels and an unknown number of militia soldiers died in the fighting on Friday, with more than 60 rebels missing and more than 50 wounded. Among the dead, rebels said, was Col. Hussein Darbouk, a defected Libyan officer who had been commanding rebel forces in the town.
“We killed a lot of their people, but obviously they have more power than us, to be quite honest,” said one rebel, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elsewhere on Saturday, rebels had taken control of Ras Lanuf, the site of a military base and an oil terminal, after a day of pitched battles with Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
Around the same time as the Friday afternoon battle in Zawiyah, two truckloads of government security officers showered hundreds of protesters with tear gas in the Tripoli suburb of Tajura. A handful of foreign correspondents and television news crews were in their midst, and many protesters saw their presence as a shield.
“This is the first time they have used gas,” one veteran of the protests told a journalist as he retreated. “When you leave they will shoot us with machine guns.”
But the militias did not wait. Moments later, with news cameras still rolling, they unleashed bursts of Kalashnikov fire. Sporadic gunfire rang out for over an hour.
A government spokesman later said the militia had fired into the air, but two doctors at the demonstration said that at least two people were wounded. The protesters, who had planned to stage a sit-in at the mosque, quickly scattered.
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[LIBYA] Guerilla Warfare in Libya Guaranteed in Case of Occupation, RT 03/03/2011
Casualties:
Estimates of deaths in the 2011 Libyan uprising have varied from 1,000 to 6,500 dead.
The numbers have been hard to come by since a media clamp-down by the government. However, some conservative estimates have been released.
On February 22, the International Coalition Against War Criminals gave an estimate that 519 people had died, 3,980 were wounded and over 1,500 were missing.
Human Rights Watch have estimated that at least 233 people had been killed by February 22.
On February 23, Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini stated that according to his information 1,000 people had died so far.
On February 25, Navi Pillay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations, said that reports indicated that "thousands may have been killed or injured".
Among the security forces there had been more than 325 dead, including government loyalists, mercenaries and rebel soldiers. There have been many reports that members of the security forces have been killed by both the government and the opposition. On February 18, two policemen were hanged by protesters in Benghazi. Also, on the same day, 50 African mercenaries, mostly from Chad, were executed by the protesters in al-Baida. Some of them were killed when protestors burned down the police station in which they locked them up and at least 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in al-Baida. The bodies of some of them were put on display and caught on video. By February 23, the government confirmed that 111 soldiers had been killed. On February 24, the IFHR said that 130 soldiers had been executed in Benghazi and al-Baida, after they mutinied and sided with the protesters.
Libya Libia Libyan Benghazi Tripoli Protests Street Demonstrations Gaddafi Qadafi Saif al-Islam Uprising Revolution Mobilize Police Brutality Unemployment Raise Minimum Wage Housing Food Inflation Corruption Freedom Of Speech Living Conditions Civil Unrest Government Death Self-immolation Human Rights Tear Gas Activists Air Force Mirage Jets Airstrikes Defect Malta February 17 2011
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