Tripoli: Libyan security forces killed 35 people in the eastern city of Benghazi late on Friday, Human Rights Watch cited witnesses and hospital sources as saying, in the worst unrest of Muammar Gaddafi's four decades in power.
Protests against Gaddafi's rule this week, inspired by uprisings in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, were met with a fierce crackdown, but restrictions on media have made it difficult to establish the full extent of the violence.
In focus: Unrest in the Middle East
New York-based Human Rights Watch said the killings on Friday took to 84 its estimate for the death toll over three days of protests - most of its focused in the restive region around Benghazi, east of Tripoli.
It said the deaths in the city on Friday happened when security forces opened fire on people protesting after funeral processions for people killed in earlier violence. There has been no official word on the number of dead.
"We put out a call to all the doctors in Benghazzi to come to the hospital and for everyone to give blood because I've never seen anything like this before," the group quoted a senior hospital official in Benghazi as saying.
Some residents of Benghazi, where the protests first erupted, told Gulf News that Libya is "on the verge of becoming free from dictatorship" as Muammar Gaddafi's regime vowed to snuff attempts to challenge the Libyan leader.
"The response of the people and the Revolutionary Forces to any adventure by these small groups will be sharp and violent," the Revolutionary Committees said on the website of their newspaper Azzahf Al Akhdar (Green March).
Gulf News has learnt that protesters broke into the central jail of Kuwafiya in Benghazi and liberated political prisoners. Thousands took to the streets late on Friday to protest against security forces killing more than 20 protesters.
"Bodies of martyrs are still littering the main Nasser Street after security forces killed as many as 20 people and injured 235 during the Thursday evening protests in the city," Fattah Al Idrisi, a resident in the city centre told Gulf News over the phone.
Gulf News later lost contact with the resident after the government disconnected telephone calls and internet services.
One citizen said there were North Koreans and Bangladeshis among scores of pro-government forces mobilised to suppress the protesters last night.
No electricity
Meanwhile, residents in Benghazi reported there was no electricity in parts of the city and that tanks were stationed outside the court building.
Libya-watchers say the situation is different from Egypt, because Gaddafi has oil cash to smooth over social problems. Gaddafi is also respected in much of the country, though less so in the Cyrenaica region around Benghazi.
"For sure there is no national uprising," said Noman Benotman, a former opposition Libyan Islamist who is based in Britain but is currently in Tripoli.
"I don't think Libya is comparable to Egypt or Tunisia. Gaddafi would fight to the very last moment," he said by telephone from the Libyan capital.
The BBC said one Benghazi protester said some soldiers had switched sides and that people clambered unopposed onto three tanks.
"The soldiers say we are citizens of this country and we cannot fight our citizens," he said.
Tight government control and media restrictions have limited the amount of information emerging about the unrest.
Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its signal was being jammed on several frequencies and its website had been blocked in Libya.
Eastern Libya focus of protests
The privately owned Quryna newspaper said that in Benghazi thousands of residents had gathered on Friday for the funeral processions of 14 protesters killed in clashes there. Thousands more had demonstrated in front of Benghazi court building.
Opposition activists said protesters fought troops for control of the nearby town of Al Bayda, scene of some of the worst violence over the past two days, where townspeople said they were burying 14 people who were killed in earlier clashes.
Residents said that by Friday evening the streets were calm but there were conflicting accounts about whether opposition activists or security forces were in control of the town.
The unrest though was not on a national scale with most protests confined to the east around Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has traditionally been weak. There were no reliable reports of major protests elsewhere, and state media said there had been pro-Gaddafi rallies in the capital.
Calm in Tripoli
Quryna newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying the General People's Congress, or parliament, would adopt a "major shift" in government policy including appointing new people to senior positions. It gave no details and the sources could not be clarified.
A sermon at Friday prayers in Tripoli, broadcast on state television, urged people to ignore reports in foreign media "which doesn't want our country to be peaceful, which ... is the aim of Zionism and imperialism, to divide our country".
Text messages sent to mobile phone subscribers thanked people who ignored calls to join protests. "We congratulate our towns which understood that interfering with national unity threatens the future of generations," it said.
With input from Duraid Al Baik, Associate Editor
