BENGHAZI, Libya — Foreign mercenaries and Libyan militiamen loyal to Moammar Khadafy tried to roll back the uprising against his rule that has advanced closer to his stronghold in Tripoli, attacking two nearby cities in battles that killed at least 17 people.
But rebels made new gains, seizing a military air base, as Khadafy blamed Osama bin Laden for the upheaval.
The worse bloodshed was in Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital, Tripoli. An army unit loyal to Khadafy opened fire with automatic weapons on a mosque where residents — some armed with hunting rifles for protection — have been holding a sit-in to support protesters in the capital, a witness said.
The troops blasted the mosque’s minaret with an anti-aircraft gun. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as about 150 wounded. A Libyan news website, Qureyna, put the death toll at 23 and said many of the wounded could not reach hospitals because of shooting by “security forces and mercenaries.”
A day earlier, an envoy from Khadafy had come to the city from Tripoli and warned the protesters: “Either leave or you will see a massacre,” the witness said. On Tuesday night, Khadafy himself called on his supporters to hunt down opponents in their homes.
Zawiya, a key city close to an oil port and refineries, is the nearest population center to Tripoli to fall into the hands of the anti-Khadafy rebellion that began Feb. 15. Hundreds have died in the unrest.
Most of the eastern half of Libya has already broken away, and diplomats, ministers and even a high-ranking cousin have abandoned Khadafy, who has ruled Libya for 41 years. He is still believed to be firmly in control only of the capital, some towns around it, the far desert south and parts of Libya’s sparsely populated center.
Khadafy’s crackdown has been the harshest by any Arab leader in the wave of protests that has swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past month, toppling the presidents of Libya’s neighbors — Egypt and Tunisia. The New York- based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll in Libya at nearly 300, according to a partial count. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed were “credible.”
Violence in Libya has forced oil companies to idle up to 750,000 barrels a day of production, or about half of Libya’s oil output of 1.6 million barrels a day.
U.S. benchmark oil prices climbed as high as $103.41 a barrel Thursday before settling at $97.28 — a 15 percent rise since the start of last week.
Hours after the attack in Zawiya, Khadafy called in to state TV and in a rambling speech expressed condolences for the dead but then angrily scolded the city’s residents for siding with the uprising.
He blamed the revolt on bin Laden and teenagers hopped up on hallucinogenic pills given to them “in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe.”
“Shame on you, people of Zawiya, control your children,” he said, addressing residents of the city outside Tripoli where the mosque attack took place. “They are loyal to bin Laden,” he said of those involved in the uprising. “What do you have to do with bin Laden, people of Zawiya? They are exploiting young people. . . . I insist it is bin Laden.”
In the latest blow to the Libyan leader, a cousin who is one of his closest aides, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, announced that he has defected to Egypt in protest against the regime’s bloody crackdown, denouncing what he called “grave violations to human rights and human and international laws.”
Gadhaf al-Dam is one of the highest-level defections to hit the regime so far, after many ambassadors around the world, the justice minister and the interior minister all sided with the protesters. Gadhaf al-Dam belonged to Khadafy’s inner circle, served as his liaison with Egypt and frequently appeared by his side.
The regime’s other attempt to take back lost territory came east of Tripoli.
Pro-Khadafy militiamen — a mix of Libyans and foreign mercenaries — assaulted a small airport outside Libya’s third- largest city, Misrata, about 120 miles from the capital.
Militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars barraged a line of government opponents who were guarding the airport, some armed with rifles, said one of the rebels who was involved in the battle.
During the fighting, the airport’s defenders seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them, he said.
At the same time, officers from an air force school near the airport mutinied and, along with residents, overwhelmed an adjacent military air base where Khadafy loyalists were holed up, a medical official at the base said. The air force personnel disabled fighter jets at the base to prevent them from being used against the uprising, he said.
The medical official said seven people were killed in the fighting at the airport — six from the opposition camp and one from the attackers — and 50 were wounded, including a 6-year-old girl and her 11-year-old sister.
“Now, Misrata is totally under control of the people, but we are worried because we are squeezed between Sirte and Tripoli, which are strongholds of Khadafy,” he said.
The doctor, medical officials and witnesses across Libya spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
International momentum has been building for action to punish Khadafy’s regime for the bloodshed.
The Swiss government on Thursday ordered a freeze of any assets in Switzerland belonging to Khadafy. The European Union pushed for Libya to be suspended from the U.N.’s top human-rights body over possible crimes against humanity and for the U.N. Security Council to approve a probe into “gross and systematic violations of human rights by the Libyan authorities.”
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the crackdown “is outrageous and it is unacceptable,” and he directed his administration to prepare a full range of options, including possible sanctions that could freeze the assets and ban travel to the U.S. by Libyan officials.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the European Union cutting off economic ties.
