Tripoli: Several hundred supporters of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gathered in the capital on Thursday to counteract online calls for an anti-government "Day of Anger" inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Libyan authorities had detained 14 activists, writers and protesters who had been preparing the anti-government protests, and there were unconfirmed reports of two people killed in an eastern city.
At least four people were killed in clashes with Libyan security forces, opposition websites and NGOs said on Thursday, as the country faced a nationwide "Day of Anger" called by cyber-activists.
The websites and a Libyan rights group based in London said the clashes with demonstrators opposed to the rule of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi took place in the eastern town of Al Baida.
"Internal security forces and militias of the Revolutionary Committees used live ammunition to disperse a peaceful demonstration by the youth of Al Baida," leaving "at least four dead and several injured," according to Libya Watch.
The scale of Thursday's protests will be a test for Gaddafi , 68, who has been in power since 1969, but whose counterparts in neighouring Egypt and Tunisia have been toppled in uprisings over the past month.
One Facebook group urging a "Day of Anger" in Libya, which had 4,400 members on Monday, had seen that number more than double to 9,600 by Wednesday following the Benghazi unrest.
Quryna newspaper said security forces and demonstrators already clashed late on Tuesday in Benghazi, also eastern Libya, in what it branded the work of "saboteurs" among a small group of protesters.
Both Britain and the European Union called for restraint by the authorities in Libya, whose relations with the West have improved sharply over the past decade.
