Tripoli braced for new clashes

Fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have set up checkpoints in Tripoli, searching cars, ahead of planned anti-government protests raising fears of new bloodshed in the Libyan capital.

Fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have set up checkpoints in Tripoli, searching cars, ahead of planned anti-government protests raising fears of new bloodshed in the Libyan capital.

A heavy crackdown the past week has spread fear among residents.

The opposition has called for protesters to march out of mosques after noon prayers in demonstrations demanding Gaddafi's removal.

Similar protests last Friday were met by brutal retaliation: Pro-regime militiamen opened fire immediately on the marches, killing and wounding a still unknown number.

Internet services, which have been patchy throughout Libya's upheaval, appeared to be halted completely in Tripoli today, as well as in Benghazi, the opposition's stronghold in the east.

Control of the capital is crucial to the Libyan leader, since it remains his strongest remaining bastion amid the uprising that began on February 15 and has broken the entire eastern half of Libya out of his control.

Even some cities in the west near Tripoli have fallen to the uprising, and the opposition has repelled repeated attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces trying to take back the territories.

A large force from a brigade led by one of Gaddafi's sons led a new attack today on Zawiya, the closest opposition-held city to Tripoli, a resident said.

The troops from the Khamis Brigade - named after the son - attacked Zawiya's western side, firing mortars and then using heavy machine guns and automatic weapons in clashes with armed residents and allied army units, said the resident.

"Our men are fighting back the force, which is big," the resident said.

The crisis has turned into something of deadlock between the two sides. Gaddafi's forces have been unable to take back significant ground from the rebellion. At the same time, his opponents, made up of ragtag citizen militias backed by mutinous army units, do not seem to have the capabilities to make a military move against territory still in regime hands.

Instead, the eastern-based opposition is hoping that residents of those areas - including Tripoli - will be able to rise up like they did in other cities where protesters drove out Gaddafi loyalists.

Today could be a significant test of whether the opposition can maintain protests in Tripoli in the face of a fearsome clampdown.

Several hours before prayers, streets were eerily empty, with few residents out. Security forces, however, began to take up positions.

In Tajoura, an eastern district of the capital where protests a week ago were attacked, police set up two checkpoints on the main highway.

Libyan authorities briefly barred many foreign journalists from leaving their hotel in Tripoli, claiming it was for their protection because they had information "al Qaida elements" plan to open fire on police to spark clashes. They later allowed them to go out into Tripoli.

Gaddafi loyalists in the capital have unleashed a wave of arrests and disappearances since last Friday's bloodshed.

Bodies of people who vanished have been dumped in the street. Gunmen in SUVs have descended on homes in the night to drag away suspected protesters, identified by video footage of protests that militiamen have pored through to spot faces. Other militiamen have searched hospitals for wounded to take away.

Residents say they are under the watchful eyes of a variety of Gadhafi militias prowling the streets.

They go under numerous names - Internal Security, the Central Support Force, the People's Force, the People's Guards and the Brigade of Mohammed al-Magarif, the head of Gaddafi's personal guard - and they are all searching for suspected protesters.

"While you are speaking to me now, there are spies everywhere and people watching me and you," one man said, cutting short a conversation with an Associated Press reporter visiting the Tripoli district of Zawiyat al-Dahman.

The fear among Gaddafi opponents is so intense that when one family set up a mourning tent in Tripoli's Fashloum neighbourhood for a 56-year-old protester killed last Friday, no one showed up to pay condolences.

During the man's burial several days earlier, "the militia was also there watching us," said the man's brother. He - like other residents - asked that he and his relatives not be identified for fear they too would be hunted down.

He said his brother was shot when militiamen opened fire on protesters emerging from Fashloum's main Al-Baz mosque last week.

"My brother was hit with a bullet right in the heart. In minutes he lost all his blood," he said, showing a mobile phone video clip of the body, with a hole in the chest.

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