Benghazi, cradle of revolt, condemns Gaddafi

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - The eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, was alive with celebration on Wednesday with thousands out on the streets, setting off fireworks and condemning the Libyan leader.

Jubilant rebels and supporters thronged the streets, waving red, green and blacks flags from the pre-Gaddafi era and giving out snacks and juice to passing cars, which honked their horns in a giant party. People danced, cheered and played loud music.

Alongside charred buildings scarred by the violence, one man held up a picture of Gaddafi's head grafted on to a pig's body as trucks full of exuberant opponents of the Libyan leader screeched around the streets.

"Ben Ali, Hosni, Muammar," read graffiti on a city billboard setting Gaddafi's name alongside the names of the ousted leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

Hossam Ibrahim Sherif, director of the Benghazi city health center, told this correspondent that about 320 people had been killed in Benghazi, the city whose uprising has led the growing challenge to Gaddafi's 41 years in power.

Anti-Gaddafi festivities congregated at the court house, the security building next door had been torched in the ancient eastern stronghold that for years rivaled the Libyan capital.

Gaddafi's increasingly desperate attempts to crush the revolt have killed as many as 1,000 people and split Libya, Italy's Foreign Minister said on Wednesday.

After a week of violence in which it threw off government control, this elegant Mediterranean port of about 700,000 is starting to run itself under "people's committees" as the dust of rebellion settles.

MERCENARIES ARRESTED

A jail burned with its doors and windows smashed on the outskirts of Benghazi and red painted graffiti read: "No to Destruction, Yes to Freedom." Trucks piled high with goods marked as donations made their way into the center of town.

Residents displayed photos of relatives killed in 1996 at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison, where more than 1,000 inmates, many from Benghazi, were shot dead. Abdullah Hamed, 41, and engineer gestured to the photos and said: "All of them are my brothers."

Gaddafi used fighter jets to crush the rebellion against his rule in the Akhdar mountains in 1996.

A lawyer in Benghazi said a security committee formed by civilians there on Monday had arrested 36 "mercenaries" from Chad, Niger and Sudan who were hired by Gaddafi's elite Praetorian Guard to fight in the city.

On the road to Benghazi, bursts of gunfire echoed around the eastern Libyan town of Al-Marja and a charred building with "Down with the Tyrant" scrawled on it bore the scars of the revolt against Gaddafi that has split the country.

"This is the Revolution of the Youth," was another slogan sprayed on a wall on the approach to Benghazi, the city whose revolt posed the first challenge to Gaddafi's rule.

Bursts of gunfire in the distance appeared to be celebratory but could have been associated with robbery or retribution in an area where many people own weapons.

ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES

Britain's Sky News showed footage of anti-aircraft missiles at what it said was an abandoned base near the city of Tobruk.

There were long lines for fuel at an Oilibya gas station, a common sight in Libya even before the rebellion in this big oil producer, where people complain that despite great hydrocarbon wealth outlying areas have been neglected.

"We Have Broken The Fear Barrier, We Won't Retreat," was scrawled in Arabic script on walls of one building.

Libyans in pastoral areas on the road east of Al-Marj went about their work, with little sign of the rebellion that has gripped the country and which Gaddafi has vowed to crush.

"There's been no effect here. That was all in cities like Benghazi and Tobruk," said one worker, who did not give his name, at a service station in Al-Kharouba, a tiny town between Tobruk and Benghazi on the fringes of the Libyan Sahara.

Inside the station, men drinking tea said life had been normal in the town.

Minibuses packed with Egyptian and Syrian workers leaving Benghazi stopped at the rest station, saying they were not fleeing the violence but were going home for the time being because all work had dried up.

"It's been fine in Benghazi ... There's no danger now," said 40-year-old Syrian, Farhan Abou Moghthab.

"We hope we can come back. We've got used to it here," Egyptian Jamabel Ahmed Mahmoud, in his late 20s, told Reuters. "This country has been good to us, and we can't forget it."

Military officers in Tobruk, still in uniform but no longer declaring allegiance to Gaddafi, said the eastern region was no longer in the hands of the Libyan leader.

(Writing by Edmund Blair and Peter Millership, editing by Giles Elgood)