Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is behind the uprising in Libya and Al-Qaeda followers give young Libyans hallucinogenic pills in their coffee to get them to revolt. Gaddafi has made the comments in a phone call to Libyan state TV Thursday, expressing condolences for deaths in the city of Zawiya but chiding its residents for joining the rebellion. He says those revolting are “loyal to Bin Laden ... This is Al-Qaeda that the whole world is fighting.” He says Al-Qaeda militants are “exploiting” teenagers, giving them “hallucinogenic pills in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe.” Witnesses said 23 people were killed when pro-Gaddafi forces attacked opponents at a mosque in Zawiya, east of Tripoli. Army units and militiamen loyal to Muammar Gaddafi struck back against rebellious Libyans who have risen up in cities close to the capital Thursday, attacking a mosque where many were holding an anti-government sit-in and battling with others who had seized control of an airport. A doctor at the mosque said 10 people were killed. The assaults aimed to push back a revolt that has moved closer to Gaddafi's bastion in the capital, Tripoli. The uprising has already broken away nearly the eastern half of Libya and unraveled parts of Gaddafi's regime. Residents of dissident-held east vowed Thursday to march on the capital Tripoli as a string of towns famous as World War II battlegrounds fell under their control. In the latest blow to the Libyan leader, a cousin who is one of his closest aides, Ahmed Gaddaf Al-Dam, announced that he has defected to Egypt in protest against the regime's bloody crackdown against the uprising, denouncing what he called “grave violations to human rights and human and international laws.” In Zawiya, 50km west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked the city's Souq Mosque, where regime opponents had been camped for days in a protest calling for Gaddafi's ouster, a witness said. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as arond 150 wounded. The other attack came at a small airport outside Misrata, where rebel residents claimed control Wednesday. Militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars barraged a line of them who were guarding the airport, some armed with automatic rifles and hunting rifles, said one of the rebels who was involved in the battle. During the fighting, the airport's defenders seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them, he said. He said dead and wounded had been taken to Misrata hospitals but could not give exact figures. The militias pulled back in the late morning. In Misrata, the local radio – controlled by the opposition like the rest of the city – called on residents to march to the airport to reinforce it, said a woman who lives in downtown Misrata. In the afternoon, it appeared fighting erupted again, she said, reporting heavy booms from the direction of the airport on the edge of the city. The leader's cousin, Gaddaf Al-Dam, is one of the most high level defections to hit the regime so far, after many ambassadors around the world, the justice minister and the interior minister all sided with the protesters. The Swiss government, meanwhile, said it had frozen assets belonging to Gaddafi and his family. France's top human rights official said up to 2,000 people could have died in the unrest and he feared Gaddafi could unleash “migratory terrorism” on Europe as his regime collapses. “The question is not if Gaddafi will fall, but when and at what human cost,” Francois Zimeray told Reuters. “For now the figures we have ... more than 1,000 have died, possibly 2,000, according to sources.” – AgenciesCaption: Show of strength A man fires his pistol into the air as he celebrates with other people in an army armored vehicle in the eastern Libyan town of Shahat, Thursday. (Reuters) __
