TRIPOLI - Libyan security forces killed 35 people in the eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday, 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. 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, 1,000 km (600 miles) 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. “Special forces who have a very strong allegiance to Gaddafi are still fighting desperately gain to control, to gain ground and the people are fighting them street by street,” said a resident of Benghazi identified as Mohammed by the BBC. The broadcaster said residents in Benghazi reported there was no electricity in parts of the city and that tanks were stationed outside the court building. While the level of unrest has not previously been seen before in the oil exporter, 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.
