‘Gaddafi forces shooting from ambulances’

Gaddafi’s forces had put down demonstrators,who took to the streets after Friday prayers to mount their first major challenge to the government’s crackdown,with snipers from rooftops,buckshot and tear gas,witnesses said. There were unconfirmed reports that an armed rebel force was approaching the city on Saturday.

In neighbouring Tajoura,where there has been significant fighting,residents barricaded a street with television sets and cinderblocks to try to keep out pickup trucks full of men with machine guns.

A rebel officer coordinating an attack on Tripoli,Colonel Tarek Saad Hussein,asserted that an armed volunteer force of about 2,000 men — including army defectors— was to arrive Friday night.

Indeed,accounts of the bloodshed on Friday indicated that Gaddafi’s forces had deployed the same determined brutality as they had earlier in defending their leader,who has ruled for over 40 years.

“They shoot people from the ambulances,” said a terrified resident,Omar,recalling an episode during the protests on Friday when one protester was wounded. “We thought they’d take him to the hospital,” he said,but the militiamen “shot him dead and left with a squeal.”

A precise death toll might be impossible. Omar said that friends who were doctors at a hospital in Tripoli saw bodies being removed from the morgue to conceal the death toll. Local residents told him that the bodies were being taken to beaches and burned.

The deputy ambassador to the UN,Ibrahim Dabbashi,had also said in New York that government forces were shooting from ambulances,pleading for international action.DAVID D KIRKPATRICK & SHARON OTTERMAN