Claim Is Highest Toll Yet for Civil War
Speaking to al-Jazeera on Sunday, Libyan rebel spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga reported that upward of 8,000 Libyans had been killed in the civil war between the burgeoning protest-rebel movement and the Gadhafi regime.
The claim is the highest toll yet reported for the conflict, but is entirely possible given that doctors estimated 2,000 killed in Benghazi alone during the initial violence. It is unclear, however, how reliable the current information the rebels have on the western tolls is, as those cities were lost in fighting over the past weeks.
The deaths from the internal fighting appear to have ground to a virtual halt since Saturday, when Western nations attacked Libya. In the day and a half since then, reports from the ground suggest that at least 64 people have been killed in the campaign, as large numbers of missiles have been fired into Libyan territory.
It is unclear at this point what percentage of the casualties in either toll represents civilians and how many are combatants. With the campaign transitioning into air strikes, the toll, particularly among civilians, seems bound to grow going forward.
March 22, 2011 at 3:33 pm |
The reported death tolls of 8000 in Libya are horrible to contemplate; however, given the fact that a Western intervention appears to have dramatically slowed the rate of casualties recently, I shudder to think what the toll may be in Yemen, which the Obama administration has been largely silent on government repression in contrast to Libya, where the US and it’s allies have adopted a policy of actively seeking to stop the governments attacks on protesters. As reported on Democracy Now!, this US double standard towards repressive regimes must end!
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/22/jeremy_scahill_as_mass_uprising_threatens