Two of the Middle East's most entrenched
rulers were battling to stay in power on
Saturday amid reports of dozens of
protesters killed in Libya and an offer of
talks by Bahrain's king being rebuffed.
Unrest has spread from Tunisia and
Egypt to Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and
Djibouti, presenting the United States
with the dilemma of maintaining stability
in the oil-rich region while upholding the
right to demonstrate for democratic
change.
Libyan security forces killed 35 people in
the eastern city of Benghazi late on
Friday, Human Rights Watch cited
witnesses and hospital sources as
saying, in the worst violence of Muammar
Gaddafi's four decades in power.
Protests against Gaddafi's rule this week,
inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and
Egypt, were met with a fierce crackdown,
but restrictions on the media have made
it difficult to establish the full extent of
the violence.
New York-based Human Rights Watch
said the killings on Friday took to 84 its
estimate for the death toll over three
days of protests -- most of its focused in
the restive region around Benghazi.
It said the deaths in the city, 1,000 km
(600 miles) east of Tripoli, happened
when security forces opened fire on
people protesting after funeral
processions for people killed in earlier
violence. There has been no official word
on the number of dead.
"We put out a call to all the doctors in
Benghazi to come to the hospital and for
everyone to give blood because I've never
seen anything like this before," the group
quoted a senior hospital official as saying.
"Special forces who have a very strong
allegiance to Gaddafi are still fighting
desperately gain to control, to gain
ground and the people are fighting them
street by street," said a resident of
Benghazi identified as Mohammed by the
BBC.
In Bahrain, a key U.S. ally and home to the
U.S. Middle East fleet, the main Shi'ite
opposition bloc has rejected a dialogue
call from the king after this week's unrest
in the island, a Shi'ite ex-lawmaker said
on Saturday.
"We don't feel there is a serious will for
dialogue because the military is in the
streets," Ibrahim Mattar, a member of the
Wefaq bloc which quit parliament on
Thursday, told Reuters.
Mattar said the authorities would have to
"accept the concept of constitutional
monarchy" and pull troops off the streets
before any dialogue could begin.
"Then we can go for a temporary
government of new faces that would not
include the current interior or defense
ministers," he said.
Bahrain's king offered a national dialogue
with all parties on Friday to try to end the
unrest which has cost six lives and
hundreds of other casualties since
Monday.
More than 60 people were in hospital on
Saturday being treated for wounds
sustained when Bahraini security forces
fired on protesters as they headed to
Pearl Square the previous day.