Libya: foreign mercenaries terrorising citizens

Thousands fled towards the Egyptian border yesterday, seeking refuge from Benghazi and al Bayda cities a day after the Libyan leader called on his people to purge the country of the protesters.

Each seemed to have a tale of horror to relate. Many had seen unarmed people shot dead in front of them by snipers, or had come across the rotting bodies of Mr Gaddafi's victims. Others had cowered at home, too terrified by the relentless gunfire raging about them to venture outside, even though many had no food, water or electricity.

But in some cases, the protesters succeeded in avenging the deaths of their peers.

Ahmed Ahmed Ibrahim showed video footage he had captured on his mobile telephone of an African mercenary hanging from a meat-hook in an Al Bayda doorway.

The mercenaries had been in action, repeatedly opened fire without warning on what he said were peaceful civilian protesters, when Mr Ibrahim and his allies got news that reinforcements were travelling into the city. The aircraft landed at the nearby Abruk military airport bringing with it a fresh cargo of mercenaries.

Arming themselves, the group of locals went to meet the plane.

Masquerarding as pro-Gaddafi partisans, they duped the mercenaries, who were described as French-speaking Africans, captured them and then dragged them into the streets of Al Bayda, Libya's third largest city.

Mr Ibrahim, who works in a cafe, said he believes most were executed although he only witnessed two slain foreigners.

With thousands believed to have died in the orgy of violence the Gaddafi regime has unleashed on its own people, much of it carried out by mercenaries. Unlike the tyrants who led Tunisia and Egypt, Zine al Abedine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, Gaddafi will not go quietly.

Mr Ibrahim said he believed it had been necessary to deliver summary justice against the protesters tormentors.

"People are getting killed and we need the outside world to come and held,"he said. "Gaddafi is not going to do a Mubarak or a Ben Ali and step down until he has killed the whole population."

Graphic stories of brutality from those fleeing Benghazi, Libya's second state, further illustrated the scale of the brutality in the east of the country since the uprising began.

Amr Rabia, a casual labourer, braved the deaths of many of his comrades in an attempt to capture the final stronghold of pro-regime forces in a military camp on the outskirts of the city.

When they overran it, they were overpowered by the stench of human death. Later, he said, they discovered scores of bodies crammed into the camp*s drainage system.

Accounts of the huge death toll in Benghazi are multiplying all the time. Yesterday a French doctor said he had counted 2,000 bodies in one hospital alone.

Yet no matter how violent the regime's response, Mr Gaddafi*s long-suffering people have refused to yield.

Much of the east of the country, including the cities of Benghazi, Al Bayda and Tobruk appeared to be in the almost total control of the protesters.

In Benghazi, jubilant crowd's celebrated the liberation of their city by hanging effigies of Mr Gaddafi - who has vowed to fight until the last drop of blood - from government buildings that once inspired fear but which now lie pillaged and derelict.

As protesters waved looted weapons in the city's police headquarters, three mercenaries were being held prisoner in upstairs cells - humiliated but, judging by what had happened to their counterparts in Benghazi - lucky to be alive.