CAIRO (AP) — Libyan security forces have killed 84 people in a harsh crackdown on three days of protests, said the New York-based Human Rights Watch, even as the government shut off Internet in the North African country early on Saturday.
The protests calling for the removal of Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's leader for the past 42 years, have erupted largely in the cities of the country's impoverished east and have been brutally suppressed with a combination of armed militias and elite forces.
"The Libyan authorities should immediately end attacks on peaceful protesters and protect them from assault by pro-government armed groups," the organization said in its statement.
Most of the deaths appeared to have taken place in the country's second largest city of Benghazi, where doctors told the Associated Press Friday that 35 bodies had been admitted, on top of more than a dozen killed the day before.
Internet was also cut off in Libya in the early hours of the morning Saturday, reported the U.S.-based Arbor Networks security company, which detected a total cessation of online traffic in the North African country just after 2 a.m. local time.
In effort to combat anti-government protests of its own in January, the Egyptian government also cut off the Internet for several days, though it did not quell the uprising that eventually brought down the president.
Libya is oil-rich, but the gap between its haves and have-nots is wide, and the protests have flared hardest in the eastern parts of the country, the site of anti-government agitation in the past.
The Central Intelligence Agency estimates about one-third of Libyans live in poverty, and U.S. diplomats have said in newly leaked memos that Gadhafi's regime seems to neglect the east intentionally, letting unemployment and poverty rise to weaken opponents there.
Information is tightly controlled in Libya, where journalists cannot work freely and many citizens fear the powerful security and intelligence services.
Witnesses and residents of several cities gave accounts of events Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In many cases, separate people gave similar reports, but their accounts could not be independently confirmed. Tolls given to the Associated Press Friday largely tally with those announced by Human Rights Watch.
At least five cities of eastern Libya have seen protests and clashes in recent days. In one of them, Beyida, a hospital official said Friday that the bodies of at least 23 protesters slain over the past 48 hours were at his facility, which was treating about 500 wounded — some in the parking lot for lack of beds.
Forces from the military's elite Khamis Brigade moved into Benghazi, Beyida and several other cities, residents said. They were accompanied by militias that seemed to include foreign mercenaries, they added. Several witnesses reported French-speaking fighters, believed to be Tunisians or sub-Saharan Africans, among militiamen wearing blue uniforms and yellow helmets.
The Khamis Brigade is led by Gadhafi's youngest son Khamis Gadhafi, and U.S. diplomats in leaked memos have called it "the most well-trained and well-equipped force in the Libyan military." The witnesses' reports that it had been deployed could not be independently confirmed.
One of Gadhafi's sons, al-Saadi, an 37-year-old army colonel, announced on local radio Thursday that he had arrived in Benghazi, sent by his father to help launch development projects. On Friday morning, al-Saadi, again spoke on the radio to express condolences for those killed the day before.
The government made an apparent gesture aimed at easing protests. The news website Quryna, which has ties to Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, another of the leader's sons, said Friday that the country's national congress has halted its session indefinitely and said many state executives will be replaced when it returns.
In addition to replacing top officials, it will endorse reforms to decentralize and restructure the government, it said.