Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, has warned that civil war could hit the country.
His comments came in a lengthy TV address as anti-government protests spread to the capital Tripoli, and were brutally countered by security forces.
Saif Gaddafi offered political reforms, and admitted that the police and army had made “mistakes”, but said the death toll was lower than reported.
The most interesting thing about the story in the New York Times is that it was filed with a Cairo dateline:
A five-day-old uprising in Libya took control of its second-largest city of Benghazi and spread for the first time to the capital of Tripoli late on Sunday as the heir-apparent son of its strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, warned Libyans in a televised speech that their oil-rich country would fall into civil war and even renewed Western “colonization” if they threw off his father’s 40-year-long rule.
In a rambling, disjointed address delivered about 1 a.m. on Monday, the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, played down the uprising sweeping the country, which witnesses and rights activists say has left more than 200 people dead and hundreds wounded from gunfire by security forces. He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt” — the neighbors to the east and west that both overthrew their veteran autocrats in the space of the last six weeks.
Here’s video from the Associated Press:
UPDATE: So much for the tough talk:
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight.
Spreading unrest in Libya shut down 6 percent of oil output in Africa’s No.3 producer and prompted a host of energy firms to pull out international staff, sending oil prices to above $105 a barrel.
