Thousands of government supporters in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi are ready to join a new assault to drive out the rebels, Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, the son of the Libyan leader, claimed this weekend.
“People are calling us from Benghazi every day saying, ‘Come and rescue us’,” said Gadaffi, who has been leading the fightback against the insurgency.
“Everybody is shooting everybody,” he said of Benghazi, the largest city in the east of the country and the headquarters of the Libyan Transitional National Council, which has set up a state-in-waiting. “It’s a chaos. It’s a mess.”
The former London School of Economics student, once feted as the reform-minded heir to a ruthless father, broke with the official government line that Al-Qaeda was leading the uprising, admitting that they amounted to only a small part of the rebel forces. But he insisted the regime retained substantial support in the east.
“You will see the Benghazi people rising up and defeating this [rebel] militia,” said Gadaffi, as he waited to give a speech to supporters. “You will see thousands in the streets, and I tell you, we will win.”
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He was dismissive of the Benghazi-based council, which was recognised by France last week as the “only legitimate representative of the Libyan people”.
“Two weeks ago, these people were working for the government. They don’t represent anybody. They are selfappointed, a joke, a Mickey Mouse council,” he said.
He warned that the Libyan offensive that began in earnest last week, driving rebel forces out of a string of eastern towns, first Bin Jawad and yesterday the oil town of Ras Lanuf, would end in a decisive victory in Benghazi, a city of 700,000.
“We have given them [the rebels] two weeks but now their time is up. It is time for action. It is time for liberation.”
Gadaffi said a separate force would advance this week on Misurata, a wealthy port town between Tripoli and Benghazi. It has been seized by the rebels but was bypassed by troops and warplanes seeking to recapture Benghazi.
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Talk of action against Libya by the international community may have galvanised the regime to act swiftly, in the realisation that the window of opportunity to move freely against the opposition could soon close.
Asked about the possibility of international forces intervening, Gadaffi was again dismissive. He declared that the West was “still living in this fantasy land” of a rebel victory.
Gadaffi, who those in the ruling elite say is running the country with the help of his father’s old guard, promised an amnesty to the rebels.
“Anyone who lays down his arms may go home and live in peace,” he said. But the rebel leaders in Benghazi are known to fear retribution and would be more likely to head for the Egyptian border if defeated.
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Al-Jazeera cameraman shot dead
An Arab cameraman was shot dead near Benghazi yesterday in what appeared to be a deliberate ambush.
Ali Hassan al-Jaber of Al-Jazeera was killed and his correspondent, Baybah Wald Amhadi, wounded in what the station described as an attack on the crew as it returned from an assignment.
Amhadi said on camera that the crew had felt that it was being watched for days. Jaber was shot three times in the back.
Further reading:
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‘We’ll never forgive the West for selling us short’
A city strangled, its people slaughtered
Andrew Sullivan: Leaving Libya to fight it out is brutal but smart