Cairo: Moammar Gadhafi's forces fired on mourners in the eastern city of Benghazi, wiped out a protest encampment and clamped down on Internet service throughout Libya on Saturday as the regime tried to squelch calls for an end to the ruler's 42-year grip on power.
Libyan protesters were back on the street for the fifth straight day, but Gadhafi has taken a hard line toward the dissent that has ripped through the Middle East and swept him up with it.
Snipers fired on thousands of people gathered in Benghazi, a focal point of the unrest, to mourn 35 protesters who were shot on Thursday, a hospital official said. At least one person was killed today and a dozen more shot in the head and chest, he said.
"Now we have youth coming to the hospital to donate blood," he said. "We are running out of supplies."
Like most Libyans who have talked to the media during the revolt, the hospital official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Before today's violence, Human Rights Watch had estimated at least 84 people have been killed. Just after 2 am local time in Libya, the US-based Arbor Networks security company detected a total cessation of online traffic in the North African country. Protesters confirmed they could not get online.
Information is tightly controlled in Libya, where journalists cannot work freely, and activists this week have posted videos on the Internet that have been an important source of images of the revolt.
Other information about the protests has come from opposition activists in exile. Egyptian officials briefly tried to cut Internet service during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak on Feb 11, but that move was unsuccessful.
Libya is more isolated, however, and the Internet is one of the few links to the outside world. The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information released a report back in 2004 that said nearly 1 million people among Libya's population of about 6 million had Internet access at the time. That was just three years after Internet service had been extended to the public.
About 5 am Friday, special forces attacked hundreds of protesters, including lawyers and judges, camped out in front of the courthouse in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city.
"They fired tear gas on protesters in tents and cleared the areas after many fled carrying the dead and the injured," one protester said over the phone. Doctors in Benghazi said on Thursday that 35 bodies had been brought to the hospital following attacks by security forces backed by militias, on top of more than a dozen killed the day before.
Standing in front of Jalaa Hospital morgue, a witness said that the bodies bore wounds from being shot "directly at the head and the chests."