Libyan govt gets tough

the Libyan leader, after an opposition “day of anger” cost at least 14 lives in the second city of Benghazi and an unknown number of Al-Baida, also in the east of the country.
“The response of the people and the Revolutionary Forces to any adventure by these small groups will be sharp and violent,” the Revolutionary Committees said on the website of their newspaper, Azzahf Al-Akhdar (Green March).
The committees are the backbone of Moamer Kadhafi’s government.
“The power of the people, the Jamahiriya (government by the masses), the Revolution and the leader are all red lines, and anyone who tries to cross or approach them will be committing suicide and playing with fire.”
A medical source in Benghazi, speaking to AFP yesterday, put the death toll there at 14 – a figure confirmed by Ramadan Briki, the locally-based chief editor of Quryna, a national newspaper.
Briki initially described the situation in the city yesterday as calm, but later reported a jailbreak by several inmates at Al-Kuifya prison, who went on to set fire to the prosector’s office, a bank and a police station.
Iraq, meanwhile, denied an Arab League summit set for March 29 in Baghdad – the first since popular unrest in the Middle East flared up last month – had been postponed, as the Libyan presidency of the pan-Arab group had said.
Kadhafi, 68, is the longest-serving leader in the Arab world, but his oil-producing North African nation is bookended by Tunisia and Egypt, whose longtime leaders have been toppled in the face of popular uprisings.
Opponents of his regime used Facebook to call for a national “day of anger” for Thursday, but Kadahfi sought to counter its impact with his own pro-regime rally in the heart of the capital Tripoli.
Hundreds joined the rally in Green Square, near the capital’s waterfront, hoisting banners proclaiming “Kadhafi, father of the people” and “the crowd supports the revolution and its leader”.
Kadhafi himself turned up briefly in the early hours yesterday, getting a rapturous welcome, according to images on state television which also showed what it called similar rallies in Benghazi, Sirte and other cities.
The Revolutionary Committees have said they will not allow protesters to “plunder the achievements of the people and threaten the safety of citizens and the country’s stability”.
Elsewhere on Thursday, in the inland city of Zentan, protesters set fire to local premises of the Revolutionary Committees offices and the security forces, the Libyan newspaper Quryna reported on its website.
Quryna, which is close to Kadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam, cited official sources as putting the death toll in Al-Baida at two. It traced the unrest on Thursday to a police shutdown of local shops that soon escalated.
On Thursday night, Briki said gunfire rang out in several parts of the city on the third straight day of protests against Kadhafi.
Thousands of people on Friday attended the funerals of anti-regime protesters killed the previous day in clashes with security forces in Libya’s second city Benghazi, witnesses told AFP.
“Thousands of people took part in Friday prayers and afterwards at the funerals of the dead in a square outside the court in northern Benghazi,” one witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Thirteen victims were buried in the city’s Hawari cemetery, he added.
Another witness said new demonstrations broke out after the funerals in Benghazi, and that public buildings there were burned.
Security forces killed three convicts yesterday as they tried to escape from a prison near Tripoli, a security services source told AFP, and more than 1 000 reportedly fled a jail in eastern Libya.
“Prisoners tried to break out of El-Jedaida prison, but guards intervened and were obliged to fire on the inmates who used violence,” the source said, adding that the situation now was “under control.”
Earlier on Friday, “more than 1 000” inmates broke out of a prison in Libya’s second city Benghazi, scene this week of bloody demonstrations against Moamer Kadhafi’s regime, the Quryna newspaper said on its website.
“There was a mutiny at Al-Kuifya prison and many prisoners escaped,” Ramadan Briki, chief editor of Quryna, told AFP earlier yesterday, adding that escapees also set fire to the local prosecutor’s office, a bank and a police station.
On its website, Quryna – which is close to Kadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam – said about 150 of the escapees were soon recaptured by security forces. – AFP.