Post date: Feb 19, 2011 7:57:33 PM
Footage uploaded to video sharing website YouTube purportedly shows at least three anti-regime protesters after having been shot whilst rallying in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi on Friday (February 18).
BENGHAZI, LIBYA (FEBRUARY 18, 2011) YOUTUBE - Deadly clashes broke out in several towns in Libya on Thursday (February 17) after the opposition called for protests against leader Muammar Gaddafi in a rare show of defiance inspired by uprisings in other Arab states.
Tight controls on media and communications in Libya made it difficult to assess the extent of the violence there.Opponents of Gaddafi, Africa's longest-serving ruler after more than 40 years in power, had used social media to call for protests on Thursday (February 17) to try to emulate the revolts which unseated rulers in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt.
Footage posted to the YouTube website on Saturday (February 19) purportedly shows anti-government protesters fleeing after some of their number were shot during demonstrations in Benghazi on Friday (February 18). The graphic video shot on a mobile phone shows at least three dead or injured men.
The demonstrations in Benghazi on Friday against Gaddafi's regime were unprecedented with Amnesty International saying 46 people had been killed in a three-day crackdown.
Amnesty quoted sources at a hospital in Benghazi, the focus for the violence and about 1,000 km (600 miles) east of Tripoli, as saying the most common injuries were gunshot wounds to the head, chest and neck. Officials have given no death toll, or commented directly on the unrest.
While the level of unrest has not previously been seen before in the oil exporter, Libya-watchers say the situation is different from Egypt, because Gaddafi has oil cash to smooth over social problems.
The unrest was not on a national scale with most protests confined to the east around Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has traditionally been weak. There were no reliable reports of major protests elsewhere, and state media said there had been pro-Gaddafi rallies in the capital.
A sermon at Friday prayers in Tripoli, broadcast on state television, urged people to ignore reports in foreign media "which doesn't want our country to be peaceful, which ... is the aim of Zionism and imperialism, to divide our country".