Libya forces open fire on protesters

Thousands of anti-Gadhafi demonstrators hit the streets across the country

Young demonstrators hurled rocks at the militia forces cruising the Tajura neighbourhood in blue trucks, but the crackle of fire from what sounded like automatic weapons panicked the protesters and they fled in several directions.

“Everyone was supposed to retreat to the mosque but they are scared of the killing because they are using bullets,” a doctor in the main Tajura mosque said as some protesters scrambled for cover there. Two people were injured, he said. Witnesses said the militia fired AK-47 assault rifles. Witnesses in Zawiya, 25 miles west of Tripoli, said in telephone interviews that unarmed civilian protesters chanting slogans against the Libyan leader came under fire from pro-Gadhafi forces who caught the demonstrators in a pincer movement.

One witness, who spoke in return for anonymity because of a fear of being singled out for reprisals, said five people had been killed. “Their bodies are on the ground, but nobody is able to approach them,” the witness said. There was no independent corroboration of that death toll. Another witness called the shooting in Zawiya a massacre. “I cannot describe the enormity of the violence they are committing against us,” he said by telephone, with bursts of gunfire audible in the background. “We want our country to be free.”

Initially, worshippers in Tajura said they planned to display their opposition to Gadhafi from inside the mosque, staging a sit-in after the noon prayers that have become a flashpoint for demonstrations in the uprisings spreading across the Arab world.

But, as prayers ended, thousands of protesters—mainly men—lofted the pre-Gadhafi flag that has become the emblem of the rebellion and began milling in a courtyard outside, shouting slogans such as “Free, free Libya,” “Tajura will bury you” and “The people want to bring down the regime”. The mosque had been packed and many more people prayed in a courtyard outside.

The protest soon thinned out, reflecting a pervasive fear of reprisals, and only several hundred demonstrators remained, keeping close to the mosque itself. But as they chanted slogans, the pro-Gadhafi militia arrived to disperse them and they broke up into several groups. Before the Friday noon prayers, witnesses in some neighbourhoods of Tripoli said roadblocks backed by armoured vehicles and tanks had been set up while official minders ordered foreign journalists not to leave the hotel where they have been told to stay by the authorities.

The government’s measures came against the backdrop of a state of terror that has seized two working-class neighbourhoods here that just a week ago exploded in revolt.
Residents on Thursday reported constant surveillance, searches of cars and even cellphones by militiamen with Kalashnikovs at block-by-block checkpoints and a rash of disappearances of those involved in last week’s protest. Some said secret policemen had been offering money for information about the identities and whereabouts of anti-Gadhafi protesters.

As rebel fighters in the country’s east celebrated their defeat of a raid on Wednesday by hundreds of Colonel Gadhafi’s loyalists in the strategic oil town of Brega, many people in Tripoli said they had lost hope that peaceful protests might push the Libyan leader from power.