Libya, February 20: Unrest flared anew in the region on Saturday as reports emerged of more than 80 killed in a bloody crackdown in Libya.
As Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi faced an unprecedented challenge to his rule, clashes continued in Yemen with one protester shot dead and five wounded in battles between protesters and government supporters near the Sanaa university campus.
In Libya, where authorities had pledged a “sharp and violent” crushing of the opposition, security forces have killed at least 84 people, Human Rights Watch said. Citing telephone interviews with witnesses and hospital staff, the New York-based watchdog said security forces used live ammunition on protesters. It said most of the deaths came in the second city Benghazi, a hotbed of anti-Gaddafi opposition.
A hospital official said 15 people were killed when commandos opened fire on mourners leaving a funeral. The official said scores more were wounded in Saturday’s attack.
“Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces are firing on Libyan citizens and killing scores simply because they’re demanding change and accountability,” said the watchdog’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director, Joe Stork.
On the fifth day of the biggest challenge yet to his four-decade regime, Gaddafi had still made no public comment. The capital itself remained calm on Saturday, a correspondent in Tripoli said.
In Yemen, clashes between protesters and government supporters raged near the capital Sanaa’s university campus, as a week of unrest claimed its first victim there. A student was shot dead as government supporters with guns, batons and rocks tried to break into the campus and students responded by hurling stones.
Supporters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh later dispersed the protesters and took control of the area around the campus and surrounding roads, the correspondent said.
The Arab League said on Saturday it was important that a March summit goes ahead in Baghdad due to what it described as “the grave, fateful developments” in the Arab world.
Libya, which holds the rotating presidency of the Arab leaders’ summit, said this week that the Baghdad meeting would be postponed because of the situation in the region.
A statement issued from the Arab League headquarters in Cairo said a formal request for the postponement of the summit had yet to be received by the body’s general secretariat. The summit is set for March 29.
“The general secretariat stresses the importance of the holding of the coming Arab summit on schedule,” the League statement said.
Current circumstances required “the greatest degree of coordination and discussion to deal with the grave, fateful developments which the Arab region is going through,” it said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague denounced the crackdown in Libya as “clearly unacceptable and horrifying” and urged authorities there and in other countries to refrain from violence.
Saturday also saw about 200 protesters brave riot police to rally in central Algiers, where they chanted “Algeria free and democratic” and “People want the fall of the regime”. An opposition deputy was badly hurt in clashes with riot police.
Fresh clashes, meanwhile, broke out between opposition supporters and police in Djibouti, a day after an unprecedented anti-regime protest ended in violence.
–Agencies–