Gadhafi spoke as U.S. officials confirmed reports by NBC News’ Richard Engel, who has managed to enter the country from Egypt, that part of the east of Libya has “fallen” to the protesters and was no longer controlled by the central government.
The officials confirmed that military units had defected to side with the protesters and that a major tribe crucial to the dictator’s survival said they would not back Gadhafi because of his brutal treatment of the people.
Despite a mounting revolt against his 41-year rule, Gadhafi said in a rambling speech Tuesday that he would never leave the country where his grandfather and father were buried.
“I will die as a martyr at the end,” he said. “I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired … when I do, everything will burn.”
Gadhafi’s forces have cracked down fiercely on demonstrators, even using fighter jets to attack people on the ground in the capital Tripoli on Monday, according to witness reports.
On Tuesday, the Libyan army deployed a “large number” of soldiers in Sabratah, west of the capital Tripoli, after protesters destroyed security services offices, the online Quryna newspaper reported.
“I’m a fighter, I’m a struggler,” Gadhafi said in a speech translated for msnbc, railing against “those agents, those rats” who had been stirring up trouble.
“You men and women who love Gadhafi … get out of your homes and fill the streets,” he said. “Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs. They are taking your children and getting them drunk and sending them to death. For what? To destroy Libya, burn Libya. The police cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them.”
Celebratory gunfire by Gadhafi supporters rang out in the capital of Tripoli after the leader’s speech, while in protester-held Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, people threw shoes in contempt at a screen showing his address.
State TV showed a crowd of Gadhafi supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square, raising his portrait and waving flags as they swayed to music after the address. Residents contacted by The Associated Press said no anti-government protesters ventured out of their homes after dark, and gun-toting guards manned checkpoints with occasional bursts of gunfire heard throughout the city.
The U.S. State Department has chartered a ferry to evacuate American travelers who want to leave Libya. The ferry was to depart Tripoli for Malta on Wednesday and was accepting U.S. citizens on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to those with medical conditions, NBC News reported.
Gadhafi, who has ruled Libya with a mixture of populism and tight control since taking power in a military coup in 1969, spoke from a podium set up at the entrance of a bombed out building that appeared to be his Tripoli residence that was hit by U.S. airstrikes in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument.
In his speech, he referenced the U.S. bombing and how he had stood up to world powers.He said later that instability in the country would enable al-Qaida to use it as a base, Al-Jazeera television reported.
Late Tuesday, the Libyan minister of interior and an army general, Abdul Fatah Younis, described as “Gadhafi’s No.2,” resigned, according to media reports. He urged the army to join the people and respond to “their legitimate demands,” Al-Jazeera reported.
“Gadhafi told me he was planning on using airplanes against the people in Benghazi, and I told him that he will have thousands of people killed if he does that,” Younis told CNN in an Arabic-language telephone interview. Younis called Gadhafi “a stubborn man” who will not give up.
The official says the U.S. still does not see an “imminent departure” by Ghadafi but said the defiance shown in Tuesday’s speech and in the reaction to the speech gives them more concern about Ghadafi willingness to leave should his support evaporate.
U.S. analysis of the speech is that Ghadafi was aiming his speech not at the Libyan people but at his supporters, as a way of further energizing them to brutally defend the regime, the official told NBC News.
The International Federation for Human Rights said in a statement that the crackdown has led to “300 to 400 dead and thousands injured” since Feb. 15. It cited the Libyan League for Human Rights, which is a member of the federation.
“The toll is also likely to rise because of the shortage of medicine which the country is facing,” the statement added.
The New York Times reported that witnesses likened the streets of Tripoli to a war zone with young demonstrators armed with stones facing militiamen and Bedouin tribesmen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. An anti-aircraft gun was outside the state television building, the Times said.
“It is extremely tense,” a witness told the paper. Story: What you need to know about the unrest in the Mideast Gadhafi’s Tuesday afternoon speech followed a bizarre 22-second appearance on television at 2 a.m. Tuesday, in which he scoffed at claims he had left the country.