Gaddafi vows to fight 'til the end

Cairo (AP):

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi vowed to fight on to his "last drop of blood" and roared at his supporters to take to the streets against protesters in a furious, fist-pounding speech yesterday after two nights of bloodshed in the capital as his forces tried to crush the uprising that has fragmented his regime.

Gaddafi's call portended a new round of mayhem in the capital of two million people. The night before, residents described a rampage by pro-regime militiamen, who shot on sight anyone found in the streets and opened fire from speeding vehicles at people watching from windows of their homes. Yesterday morning, bodies still lay strewn in some streets.

Gunshots in celebration were heard after Gaddafi's speech, aired on state TV and on a screen to several hundred supporters in Tripoli's central Green Square, witnesses said.

Swathed in brown robes and a turban, the country's leader for nearly 42 years spoke from behind a podium in the entrance of his bombed-out Tripoli residence hit by US airstrikes in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a symbol of defiance.

Surreal view

At times the camera panned back to show the outside of the building and its towering monument of a gold-coloured fist crushing an American fighter jet. But the view also gave a surreal image of Gaddafi, shouting and waving his arms wildly all alone in a broken-down lobby with no audience, surrounded by torn tiles dangling from the ceiling, shattered concrete pillars and bare plumbing pipes.

Gaddafi depicted the protesters as misguided youths, who had been given drugs and money by a "small, sick group" to attack police and government buildings. He said the uprising was fomented by "bearded men", a reference to Islamic fundamentalists and Libyans living abroad. He called on supporters to take to the streets to attack protesters.