Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Quryna website, which has ties to one of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s sons, Seif Al-Islam Gadhafi, said Friday that the country’s national congress has halted its session indefinitely, after anti-regime protesters battled with security forces in the country.

The site added that many state executives would be replaced when it returns. The country’s national congress would also endorse reforms to decentralize and restructure the government, it said.
The website added that 1,000 inmates at a prison in the eastern city of Benghazi attacked guards and escaped. Three of them were shot dead by guards.

Residents of Tripoli, where small protests took place in central districts, said that they received a text message on their cell phones threatening people “who dare to violate the four red lines” which include Gadhafi himself, national security, oil and Libyan territory, said one woman who received the message.

Access to social networking website Facebook was cut in the Libyan capital Friday and access to the Internet was intermittent amid deadly anti-regime protests, computer users reported.
From early evening it was impossible to access the Facebook site and connections to other sites were either very slow or not possible, they said.

The state of Internet connections in the rest of the country was not known.
Gadhafi’s regime vowed Friday to snuff out attempts to challenge the Libyan leader, after an opposition “day of anger” became a bloodbath.

In Zentan, a female resident said militiamen attacked the city after protesters set fire to police stations and sprayed graffiti on the walls that read: “Down with Gadhafi.”

Officials with loudspeakers offered money for residents to stop protesting, but then cut off electricity and water, the woman said, describing how she was standing on the top of her building, watching the events.
Protesters battled with security forces for control of neighborhoods in eastern Libya where dozens of people have reportedly been killed in two days of clashes.

A hospital official in the eastern city of Beyida said Friday that the bodies of at least 23 protesters slain over the past 48 hours were at his facility, which was treating about 500 wounded, some in the parking lot for lack of beds.
Residents said security reinforcements had been bused in, including what they said where foreign African mercenaries, to put down protesters who burned police stations.

But local police were battling alongside protesters against security forces, two witnesses in the city said.
Protesters clashed with police in Benghazi Friday after a funeral march to bury 15 protesters shot to death by security forces a day earlier, said Gamal Bandour, a judge in the city, the second largest in Libya after Tripoli.

On their way back from the service, the mourners set fire to government buildings and police stations, he said.
Nizar Jebail, owner of an advertising company, said Friday he spent the night with other protesters camped out in front of the city’s court building. He said he wants not just reforms, “but freedom and equality.”
“There are lawyers, judges, men and some women here, demanding the ouster of Gadhafi. Forty-two years of dictatorship are enough,” Jebail said by phone. “We learned from Tunisia and Egypt.”