Libya’s fallen leader Moamer Gaddafi on Thursday called for a guerrilla war against rebel forces who have seized control of the country, in audio tapes aired on an Arab satellite television.
“Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town … to defeat the enemy everywhere,” he said in a second message of the day that could not be immediately authenticated. “The aim is to kill the enemy wherever he may be, whether he be Libyan or foreign,” Gaddafi, himself a revolutionary who led a 1969 coup against the country’s monarchy, said on the 42nd anniversary of his takeover.
“We will never allow our (oil) wells and our ports to be under their (the West’s) control. Our resistance will expand,” vowed the 69-year-old colonel.
Earlier, in a less calm voice likewise broadcast on the pro-Gaddafi, Arab television Arrai Oruba which is based in Syria, Gaddafi reiterated he would not surrender and was prepared for “a long battle” even if Libya burns.
He urged his supporters to keep up their resistance to the insurgency which has forced him into hiding, as a major conference opened in Paris on aiding the rebel National Transitional Council to set up a new administration.
“Even if you cannot hear my voice, continue the resistance … We will not surrender. We are not women and we are going to keep on fighting,” he said.
“If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who can govern it? So let it burn,” Gaddafi added in the message sent from an undisclosed location. A senior rebel leader dismissed the statements as a reflection of Gaddafi’s “despair” at the success of the insurgency.
“Gaddafi’s speech is a sign of misery and despair,” Ahmed Darrat, who is overseeing the interior ministry for the rebels until a new government is elected, told AFP in Tripoli. Gaddafi claimed there were splits between NATO, “the alliance of aggression” whose warplanes have paved the way for the insurgents’ advance, and the rebels, “its agents.” His messages followed similar defiant words from his son Seif al-Islam on Wednesday night.
Gaddafi boasted that his last bastions in the country, especially his birthplace of Sirte, were impregnable, in his latest audio messages since rebels entered Tripoli on August 20. “At the end of the day, we will win the battle, the colonisers will go back to their countries and the agents will be finished with,” was the prediction from the fallen strongman.
Gaddafi calls for guerrilla war against rebels
