Is Gaddafi plotting chemical assault against Libyan rebels? Troops seen wearing gas masks

By Andrew Malone

Last updated at 1:38 AM on 3rd May 2011

Dailymail

Fears that Colonel Gaddafi is planning to use chemical weapons against rebels grew yesterday when forces loyal to the Libyan tyrant were seen wearing gas masks.

After giving rebels in the besieged city of Misrata until midnight tonight to surrender or face the ‘fires from Hell’, Gaddafi’s troops were yesterday seen wearing the masks for the first time since the uprising against his rule began seven weeks ago.

The chilling development prompted rebel fighters in Misrata, which is surrounded on three sides by Gaddafi’s forces, to radio for immediate supplies of their own protective masks to be shipped from Benghazi, their stronghold in the East.

With more than 1,000 dead in Misrata after fierce pounding by Gaddafi’s forces, the prospect of a chemical attack has sent a new wave of fear and panic through the city, with civilians also desperately trying to find gas masks.

A doctor, who asked not to be named, said sources inside Gaddafi’s regime had warned him to flee with his family by yesterday – before the dictator takes revenge against the people of Misrata when the deadline expires.

Although the deaths remain unverified, what appeared to be Saif al-Arab’s coffin, covered in flowers and wrapped in the Libyan flag, was carried through the crowds to the grave at Hani cemetery in Tripoli. Gaddafi himself was not at the funeral, but  Saif al-Islam, the most prominent of his sons, attended in dark tribal robes.

Meanwhile, across the city, British and other Western embassies smouldered following revenge attacks by angry mobs.

The embassies destroyed at the weekend were empty and nobody was reported to have been injured – but the attacks heightened tensions between the Libyan regime and Western powers, prompting the United Nations to pull its international staff out of the capital.

As Gaddafi’s son was being buried, the Libyan despot launched a new attack on Misrata, bombarding the harbour with shells and mortars in an effort to cut off the city’s only lifeline to the outside world.

‘Our men there no longer just want weapons and ammunition,’ a senior rebel commander in Benghazi told the Mail. ‘They are pleading for gas masks – they know Gaddafi is capable of anything.’

General Abdul Fatah Younis, a Libyan interior minister before defecting to the opposition, claimed the dictator would be ready to use chemical weapons in a last stand against rebels or the civilian population.

‘He will fight up to the final drop of his blood,’ he said.

‘Gaddafi is desperate now. He still has about 25 per cent of his chemical weapons. He always says: “You will love me or I  will kill you”.’

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