In this video image broadcast on Libyan state television early Monday Feb. 21, 2011 Seif al-Islam, son of longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, speaks. Al-Islam says protesters have seized control of some military bases and tanks, and also warned of civil war in the country that would burn its oil wealth. (AP Photo/Libyan State Television)SARAH EL DEEB,Associated Press
CAIRO – After anti-government unrest spread to the Libyan capital and protesters seized military bases and weapons, Moammar Gadhafi’s son went on state television to proclaim that his father remained in charge with the army’s backing and would “fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.”
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, in the regime’s first comments on the six days of demonstrations, warned the protesters on Sunday that they risked igniting a civil war in which Libya’s oil wealth “will be burned.”
The speech followed a fierce crackdown by security forces who fired on thousands of demonstrators and funeral marchers in the eastern city of Benghazi in a bloody cycle of violence that killed 60 people on Sunday alone, according to a doctor in one city hospital. Since the six days of unrest began, more than 200 people have been killed, according to medical officials, human rights groups and exiled dissidents.
Libya’s response has been the harshest of any Arab country that has been wracked by the protests that toppled long-serving leaders in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. But Gadhafi’s son said his father would prevail.