BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON – The escalating revolt in Libya on Friday emboldened protesters across the Arab world, where tens of thousands flooded streets from Tunisia to Yemen to demand better lives and greater freedom.
Government forces shot dead at least two protesters in Tripoli, television stations reported. Moamer Gaddafi appeared on the central Green Square to make an impassioned speech of defiance, after witnesses described swirling clashes on streets all around the city between security forces loyal to the 68-year-old leader and crowds of protesters.
“We will fight if they want,” he said, gesturing from a high stone wall. “We are ready to triumph over the enemy … I am in the middle of the crowds … We will defeat any foreign attempt, as we have defeated Italian colonialism and American raids.” Raising the prospect of wider civil conflict in Libya’s tribal society, he also said he might arm tribesmen in future. In Az-Zawiyah, 23 people were killed and 44 injured when regime loyalists mounted a ferocious rearguard action against protesters in the key oil refinery town, Libya’s Quryna paper reported. Reports said the third city, Misrata, was also under rebel control.
Such reports are hard to verify, with foreign correspondents unable to travel freely around western Libya. But Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam said the government was in control of the west, south and centre, and that his family had no intention of leaving. Later in the night, the US said it was moving ahead with imposing unilateral and multilateral sanctions on Libya as it withdrew embassy personnel from the Libyan capital and suspended all embassy operations for security reasons”It has been shuttered,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
The United Nations warned Libya’s food distribution system was at risk of collapsing and from Cairo, state media reported that Kadhaf al-Dam, a close Gaddafi aide had resigned in protest against the handling of the crisis. The protests sweeping the Middle East, which have already toppled Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, have been organised largely on social networking website Facebook.
In Iraq, a “Day of Rage” against the government’s failure to provide basic services left seven dead after the clashes in the north while thousands of protesters poured into Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. Angry young men threw stones, shoes and bottles at riot police and overturned two concrete walls that had been erected to seal off access to Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone, home to the US embassy.
Security forces fanned out in force and imposed a vehicle ban after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki claimed Al Qaeda insurgents and loyalists of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein organised the demonstrations. Across Yemen, tens of thousands demonstrated after the main weekly Muslim prayers to demand that veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down.
In the capital, thousands poured into a main square near Sanaa University, many of them women, chanting “Out, out!” and “God bears witness to your acts, Abdullah.” The protesters have dubbed Friday “the beginning of the end” for Saleh’s regime which has been in power in Sanaa since 1978. “There is no solution unless the regime steps down,” prayer leader Sheikh Abdullah Satar told the faithful over a megaphone.
In the main southern city of Aden, thousands more rallied but there were no immediate reports of violence despite near daily clashes that have killed 15 people and wounded scores in the country.
In Tunisia, tens of thousands rallied to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi’s transitional government in the biggest rally since last month’s ouster of Ben Ali.Demonstrators chanted “Ghannouchi leave” and “Shame on this government” as army helicopters circled above what police estimated as 100,000 people. In Bahrain, the anti-regime campaign entered a 12th day with a mass rally to honour seven victims of a deadly police crackdown last week.
