Gaddafi scorns rebel ‘rats’ as fighting breaks out in Tripoli

Gaddafi scorns rebel ‘rats’ as fighting breaks out in Tripoli  Beleaguered Colonel Muammar Gaddafi appealed to the Libyan people on Sunday to march “by the millions” and repel an assault on Tripoli by “rats,” as explosions and gunfire rocked the capital overnight, with rebels making a final push to end the Libyan leader’s 42-year rule.
“We have to put an end to this masquerade. You must march by the millions to free the destroyed towns" controlled by rebels he labeled as “traitors” and “rats.”
“These scums enter mosques to cry ‘God is great.’ They are dirty. They are defiling the mosques,” Colonel Gaddafi said in an audio message broadcast over state television early on Sunday
Earlier, a Tripoli resident said cries of “Allahu Akbar” could be heard from mosques in the city’s eastern sectors.
Colonel Gaddafi accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country is helping lead NATO-coordinated air strikes on the strongman's military assets, of recruiting the rebels as “agents” to steal Libya’s vast oil wealth.
“To win the upcoming elections, he wants to be able to say to his people: ‘Here, I'm offering you Libyan oil’ and this is going to be achieved with the help of traitors.
“But the Libyan people will not allow France to take its oil or leave Libya to the hands of traitors,” he said.
Intense gunfire erupted after the break of the dawn-to-dusk fast of Ramadan on Saturday. Witnesses reported fighting in the eastern neighborhoods of Soug Jomaa, Arada and Tajura, the government insisted it was in charge of the city.
Journalists in the center of the capital said the fighting subsided somewhat after several hours, but bursts of machinegun fire and explosions could still be heard in the pre-dawn hours, indicating fighting in several neighborhoods.
Zero hour for Gaddafi
“The zero hour has started. The rebels in Tripoli have risen up,” Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
The clashes inside the capital triggered massive street celebrations in Benghazi as well as elsewhere in the country and in the capital of neighboring Tunisia.
Colonel Gaddafi’s information minister said the rebel incursion into the city had been quickly put down.
“The situation is under control,” Information Minister Moussa Ibrahim said, adding that pro-regime volunteers had repelled insurgent attacks in several neighborhoods.
Ibrahim dismissed mounting speculation that the regime was on the brink as a “media attack,” but more gunfire was heard after he spoke on television.
Rebel advances on Tripoli have transformed the war since they seized the city of Zawiyah on Tripoli’s Western outskirts a week ago, cutting the capital off from its main road link to the outside world and putting unprecedented pressure on Colonel Gaddafi.
Before dawn, state television showed Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam addressing what it called a youth conference. A roomful of supporters broke into occasional chants and applause as he declared that the rebels would be defeated.
“The revolt in Libya will not succeed. You will never see us as Libyans surrender and raise the white flag: that is impossible. This is our country and we will never leave it.”
Fighting was still raging after midnight around Mitiga airbase in Tripoli’s Tajourah district, an area said to be under rebel control, an opposition activist told a Reuters journalist outside Libya.
The gun battles left a number of rebels dead in the suburb of Qadah and elsewhere, along with at least three pro-Gaddafi soldiers in the Zawiyat al-Dahmania district of Tripoli, he said.
A Tripoli resident told Reuters that Muslim clerics in parts of Tripoli had called on people to rise up, using the loudspeakers on minarets. The resident said the call went out around the time people were breaking their Ramadan fast.
“We can hear shooting in different places,” one resident said. “Most of the regions of the city have gone out, mostly young people ... it’s the uprising... They went out after breaking the (Ramadan) fast.”
“They are shouting religious slogans: ‘God is greatest!’”
The latest rebel advance on Tripoli came a day after they seized the town of Zliten, which is 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the capital.
Rebels have been seeking to sever Tripoli’s supply lines from Tunisia to the west and to Colonel Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte in the east, hoping to cut off the capital, prompt defections and spark an uprising inside Tripoli.
The International Organization for Migration said it was drawing up plans to evacuate thousands of migrants stranded in Tripoli because exit points have been cut off after a spate of rebel successes.