Fight to the death in Libya

“Qaddafi's Son Warns of Civil War as Thousands Clash in Tripoli

Published February 20, 2011

FoxNews.com

 

The son of Libya's leader Moammar Qaddafi is blaming external forces for violence as thousands of protestors clash with Qaddafi supporters in central Tripoli Sunday.

 

Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi admits on Libya's state television that the country's army and police did make mistakes dealing with protesters and that the country is running the risk of plunging into civil war. He claimed that there is a plot to break Libya into small Islamic states.

 

He proclaimed that his father remained in charge with the army's backing.

 

"The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet," he said in a rambling and sometimes confused speech of nearly 40 minutes.

A human rights watch group says more than 230 people have been killed since protests began, according to Reuters. Qaddafi's son denies hundreds have been killed.

 

Qaddafi's son says that anti-government protesters in Benghazi have seized army vehicles and weapons. A witness tells Al-Jazeera that some troops have defected and joined the anti-government protesters.

In the speech, the younger Qaddafi offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media and the penal code.

Libyan forces fired machine-guns at thousands of mourners marching in a funeral for anti-government protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi Sunday, a day after commandos and foreign mercenaries loyal to longtime leader Qaddafi attacked demonstrators with assault rifles and other heavy weapons. At least 60 people were killed in those attacks, according to Reuters.

The crackdown in oil-rich Libya is shaping up to be the most brutal repression of anti-government protests that began with uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The protests spread quickly around the region to Bahrain in the Gulf, impoverished Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula, the North African neighbors of Tunisia — Libya, Algeria, Morocco — and outside the Middle East to places including the East African nation of Djibouti and even China.

Qaddafi has been trying to bring his country out of isolation, announcing in 2003 that he was abandoning his program for weapons of mass destruction, renouncing terrorism and compensating victims of the 1986 La Belle disco bombing in Berlin and the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/...19334753/#ixzz1EYlwnrLo”