LIBYAN police dispersed an anti-regime protest in the capital city of the country's eastern province of Cyrenaica Benghazi overnight, prompting a show of strength by supporters of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a number of cities, media said Wednesday. Cyrenaica has traditionally been the hotbed of anti-Gaddafi activists. Website Libya Al-Youm said police used "force" to disperse a crowd gathered outside a police post in Benghazi while the BBC quoted witnesses as saying stones were thrown at police who responded with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. The protest was started by families of 14 people killed at a 2006 Islamist rally in Benghazi, Libya's second city, who gathered outside the police post to demand the release of their lawyer Fethi Tarbel, online news portal Al-Manara said. Tarbel, who had been arrested for unknown reasons, was freed under pressure from the families, according to another online news site, Qurina. But the crowd of protesters grew and they began chanting anti-regime slogans such as "The people will end corruption" and "The blood of the martyrs will not be in vain", before police moved in to disperse them. Soon afterwards, state television showed hundreds of demonstrators taking to the streets of the capital Tripoli and other Libyan cities in a show of support for Gaddafi. The veteran leader who has ruled the country since 1969 is facing an ever increasing number of Internet calls for protests by activists buoyed by the ouster of ex-presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali on its eastern and western borders, in both Egypt and Tunisia respectively. The Benghazi demonstrations are fuelled by the wave of protests that has swept through the Arab world, rocking regimes that have long seemed unmovable. A total of 38 people have been killed as Al-Ahram Weekly went to press and hundreds were reported injured. Authorities have been sufficiently concerned about the scale of potential protests that they have hit out in a bid to discredit the dissidents. At prayers attended by Gaddafi on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Mohamed, the floor was opened to a "representative of the families of the Benghazi martyrs" to "renew their allegiance" to Gaddafi. Be that as it may, Libya braced itself for a "Day of Anger" following revolts in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia. The European Union, meanwhile, urged Libyan authorities to allow "free expression" in the North African nation and listen to protesters.
