Libya protests: 140 'massacred' as Gaddafi sends in snipers to crush dissent

Snipers shot protesters, artillery and helicopter gunships were used against crowds of demonstrators, and thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes as the Libyan regime sought to crush the uprising.

"Dozens were killed ... We are in the midst of a massacre here," a witness told Reuters. The man said he helped take victims to hospital in Benghazi.

Libyan Muslim leaders told security forces to stop killing civilians, responding to a spiralling death toll from unrest which threatens veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi's authority.

Mourners leaving a funeral for protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi came under fire, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more. A hospital official said one of those who died was apparently struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile, and many had been shot in the head and chest.

The hospital was overwhelmed and people were streaming to the facility to donate blood. "Many of the dead and the injured are relatives of doctors here," he said. "They are crying and I keep telling them to please stand up and help us." 

Saturday's new deaths are in addition to the 84 people believed to have been killed by Friday night, in the brutal government response, with fears that the eventual toll will prove much higher.

The five-day uprising in eastern Libya has been the greatest challenge to the 42-year rule of Col Gaddafi, the world's longest-serving ruler. With internet and phone lines to the outside world disrupted, it was unclear whether the revolt inspired by the revolutions in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt was spreading from the impoverished east of Libya to the capital Tripoli, or whether it was being successfully extinguished.

It was centred on Benghazi, 600 miles east of the capital, where a human rights activist lawyer was arrested on Tuesday. Chanting crowds, tens of thousands strong, filled the streets and police reportedly fled or joined the protesters, as unrest spread to surrounding towns. Fighting also broke out in the cities of Al-Bayda, Ajdabiya, Zawiya, and Darnah, with witnesses reporting piles of dead. Hospitals made frantic appeals for blood to treat wards full of wounded people.

Libyan special forces launched a dawn attack on Saturday against hundreds of protesters, including lawyers and judges, camped in front of the courthouse in Benghazi. "They fired tear gas on protesters in tents and cleared the areas after many fled carrying the dead and the injured," one protester said by phone from the city.

Video clips on the internet showed jubilant crowds at the start of the protest smashing down concrete statues of their ruler's Little Green Book, containing his sayings, and fighting running street battles with security forces. There were smaller protests in Tripoli, a stronghold of the Gaddafi family whose population received a much better share of Libya's oil wealth.

Colonel Gaddafi himself was shown on state-run television driving in a motorcade through Tripoli, surrounded by cheering supporters pumping their fists in the air and chanting slogans of support.

The pro-government Al-Watania newspaper praised Colonel Gaddafi, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1969, and insisted the people were uniting with the government against "traitors of the West". Foreign media were exaggerating the scale of the violence, it said.

Reports from Benghazi gave a very different picture of the crisis, describing how the city's residents battled brutal security forces sent from the capital. One man, who gave his name only as Mohammed, told the BBC: "The army are joining the people, the people are going out of their homes and fighting street by street and they are winning."

A Benghazi cleric, Abellah al-Warfali, said he had a list of 16 people who had been killed, most with bullet wounds to the head and chest. "I saw with my own eyes a tank crushing two people in a car," he said. "They didn't do any harm to anyone."

Demonstrators claimed the regime had unleashed French-speaking African mercenaries against them, recruited from nearby countries such as Chad to help prop up the regime. Shaky videos filmed secretly from inside buildings and posted on YouTube showed the soldiers on the streets of Benghazi. Several were reportedly caught by the crowd and lynched.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, urged Libya to stop using force against protesters. "I condemn the violence in Libya, including reports of the use of heavy weapons fire and a unit of snipers against demonstrators," Mr Hague said in a statement. "This is clearly unacceptable and horrifying."

Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch, which estimated the death toll at 84, said: "What is astonishing is the bravery of Libyans, who are running a great risk of disappearance and torture."

Facebook, which was used by protesters in Egypt and Tunisia to coordinate their successful uprisings, was blocked. So was the website of Al-Jazeera, the international television network which is based in the Middle East.

Foreign journalists were refused entry. Demonstrators using Twitter warned each other that regime spies were carefully monitoring the internet, and mobile phone users were sent threatening messages from the government, warning them to remain patriotic and not to join the protests. One such message red: "We congratulate those who understand that interfering with national unity threatens the future of generations."

Omar, a 24-year-old civil servant in Benghazi, who asked for his surname to be withheld, said: "Gaddafi is reacting to the protests with utter ruthlessness. Tanks are on the streets, and there are running battles between armed killers and protesters. Some of the soldiers have been so disgusted by what is going on that they have swapped sides."

A British-based Libyan, Ahmed, who asked for the rest of his name to be withheld, said demonstrators had been attacked by Colonel Gaddafi's African mercenaries. "It started peacefully because the people want their country back after 42 years," he told The Sunday Telegraph. He was able to telephone friends and contacts in Libya, although they were barred from making international calls out of the country.

"They don't have any weapons so it is difficult for the people in Benghazi to defend themselves," he said. "But the army were so horrified when these mercenaries started attacking protesters that they have joined the people to defend them. It is chaotic in the hospitals. Medical supplies and everything else has been blocked and they are making appeals in the streets for people to come forward and give blood."

A Libyan journalist said of the African mercenaries: "The soldiers are vicious killers. People are so terrified of them that they've been doing everything possible to get away.

"Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned."

Fatih, 26, another Benghazi resident, said: "A lot of the thugs he's employing are not Arabic speakers. They're armed to the teeth and only use live ammunition. They don't ask questions – they just shoot. Buildings and cars have been set on fire here, and the situation is getting worse. The dead and injured are everywhere.

"The mercenaries shoot from helicopters and from the top of roofs. They don't care who they kill."

Libya is one of the biggest oil and gas exporters in the world, with companies like BP moving in to exploit its reserves following the rebuilding of its relationship with the west.

However, the unemployment rate is 30 per cent, housing is in short supply, and there is no political opposition and a pervasive police state. Much of Tripoli's population live in gigantic, soulless tower blocks.

Poverty is much worse in the east. Benghazi's tribes have always been suspicious of Colonel Gaddafi and the regime starves the region of investment.