Unconfirmed reports on social media, via telephone and by email say that protesters over the past two days in several cities in Libya have clashed with armed security forces as well as "greens," civilian enforcers of the mishmash ideology contained in dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi's "Green Book," a windy treatise on social, political and economic issues. Witnesses say that hospitals are filled with wounded protesters and that in the cities of al-Bayda and Benghazi in eastern Libya at least 14 dissidents have been killed.
In Tripoli today, a few hundred anti-government demonstrators appeared in the Green Square downtown while anti-government protesters gathered on streets in several parts of the city. There were reports via social media and texting, all of them unconfirmed, of minor clashes.
In Benghazi Tuesday night, after an arrest of an opposition leader brought 2000 people into the streets, security forces responded, witnesses said, with tear gas, water cannon and bullets. Protesters threw stones at police, trashed some government offices and burned several vehicles. Unverified reports say the regime flew troops to Benghazi Wednesday night and has planted snipers on rooftops in key locations.
Videos posted to Facebook and other sites show armored trucks outfitted with small bulldozer blades pushing into small groups of demonstrators to clear the streets.
As in the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, social media are playing a large part in the anti-government protests. A feed of tweets from Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities can be found here. The Los Angeles Times reported early Thursday:
A series of chilling posts was relayed via Twitter from a protester identified as Abdallah who was phoning in reports from Benghazi this morning:
Abdallah (caller from benghazi): They are killing us, they just killed 6, they have swords and knifes.
Abdallah: They are killing everybody, I am running now, they have released people from the prisons.
Abdallah: Yes, there are pro gaddafi protests: but they are not Libyan, they are Africans they are killing everybody.
Few outside media operate in Libya on a regular basis and state-controlled media is a clumsy servant of the regime and notoriously unreliable on just about everything. That means rumors tend to rule the day. Even Al Jazeera, which has been banned from Libya over the past few years, has no journalists there. It reported today that, acting to pre-empt a scheduled "Day of Rage" to commemorate the killing of 18 people on Feb. 17, several hundred pro-government demonstrators showed up this morning in the Green Square in Tripoli, the capital. Some social media sites posted videos of government helicopters flying over the square. The demonstrators chanted:
"We sacrifice our blood and souls for you, our leader!" and "We are a generation built by Muammar and anyone who opposes it will be destroyed!"
[Ibrahim Jibreel, a Libyan opposition member based in Barcelona, said:] "There are few who come out in support of the dictator in Libya and they are not going to succeed.
"We are trying to get the voices out of Libya, we are trying to get media attention to the plight of the Libyan people, to get the media to focus on the injustices that are happening in Libya.
"We are urging the governments and diplomatic missions that are in Libya to act as observers, to document the abuses that are going to happen and we know that they are going to happen because this is a totalitarian, brutal regime."...
On Wednesday in Zentan, a small city a few dozen miles to the southwest of Tripoli, protesters burned the police station (shown in the photo) and released a small number of dissidents who had been arrested earlier. They also burned large posters of Gaddafi and trashed the headquarters of the local Greens, chanting "Get out, Muammar," "People want the end of the regime," and "Dictator, leave." Internet service has always been spotty in Zentan, but some reports via cellphone indicated that the Greens had fled and that protesters were effectively in charge of the city. As with reports from other cities, this could not be independently verified.
Gaddafi left Tripoli in the hands of the security forces and his henchmen and was reportedly greeted by supporters in Sabha Wednesday, a small city deep in the Libyan interior.
Meanwhile, in Bahrain, the crackdown by security forces, in which at least three dissidents have been killed and at least 60 are missing, has continued. Sleeping protesters were attacked Thursday morning in the capital's Lulu Square (shown before the government took action in the photo),with three killed and some 230 wounded.
Nurse Zainab Yousef Hassan said she was working in a clinic in the square when "they came from everywhere, so many police, and began beating doctors, everyone."
Since the attack, the Bahraini military has been patrolling the streets with tanks.
In anger over the violence, the country's main Shiite Muslim opposition party announced its 18 members were leaving the parliament, casting doubt on the function of the 40-seat body. Bahrain is governed by Sunni Muslims, and the grievances of the country's Shiite majority are driving the current protests.
The violence presents a diplomatic challenge to the United States, which relies heavily on Bahrain for defense assistance even as it presses for democratic change in the region. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa on Thursday morning to express "deep concern about recent events" and to urge restraint, a State Department official said in an e-mail message to reporters.
Unlike the nationalist protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, those in Bahrain have emerged because the Shi'ite Muslim majority feels oppressed by the ruling Sunni royal family.
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You can find substantial amounts of information about what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East at the series of links and excerpts compiled by Kossacks and published under the moniker Tahrir.
