Anti-Gaddafi protesters return to streets following massacre

The continuing violence being used against protesters is earning world-wide condemnation of Colonel Gaddafi and putting pressure on Britain over its decision to restore relations with the dictator.

Pro-Gaddafi forces opened fire on mourners marching at a funeral on Saturday for demonstrators killed in earlier clashes in Libya’s second city.

Mohammed Abdullah, a Dubai-based member of the Libyan Salvation Front, has claimed that hospital officials in Benghazi are saying the death toll in the city might have reached 300.

The US ambassador to London, Louis Susman, said yesterday that he hoped there would be an international reassessment of relations with Libya in the light of the “horrendous violence” of the past few days. Britain has come under fire in America for its normalisation of relations with the Gaddafi regime, particularly over the decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Mr Susman said it was a mistake to give Colonel Gaddafi “greater stature and greater ability on the world front to look like he is a good citizen”.

Mona Rishmawi, a legal adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said there was a “real question mark” over the decision of countries – like Britain – to sell arms to Libya in recent years.

Foreign Secretary William Hague is set to urge foreign ministers at an EU summit today in Brussels to join Britain in expressing concern at Libya’s use of force. He has also called on leaders of Arab countries to raise their own protests at events in Libya, which has seen the most brutal official response to the wave of unrest sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East. Protests in Egypt and Tunisia have sparked a series of uprisings with demonstrations taking place in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco and even calls for people to take to the streets in China.

Internet access in Libya has been intermittently shut down and movements of journalists is strictly controlled, so only patchy information has emerged so far.

Mr Hague said: “It is very important to make clear that the world is watching, despite the fact that TV cameras don’t have access and we can’t see on our screens the sort of pictures we have seen from Egypt and Bahrain. The United Kingdom condemns what the Libyan government has been doing and how they have responded to these protests, and we look to other countries to do the same.

“What Colonel Gaddafi should be doing is respecting basic human rights and there is no sense of that in the dreadful response, the horrifying response of the Libyan authorities to these protests.”

Hundreds of Libyan nationals gathered outside their country’s embassy in London yesterday to call for Gaddafi’s removal. Dr Abdelwahb Naas, 56, a doctor working in Birmingham, said: “My country is swimming in a pool of blood. People have been massacred openly in the street. It’s a bloodbath.”

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said the Libyan ambassador should be called to the Foreign Office today to be told of “Britain’s revulsion at the sickening scenes we are witnessing”.