Gaddafi says he is still in Libya

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has appeared for less than a minute on state television and made brief remarks to say he was in the capital Tripoli and deny rumours he had fled to Venezuela amid the unrest sweeping his country.

Colonel Gaddafi was seated in the passenger seat of a car holding an umbrella up through the open door to shelter him from the rain that has been falling in the capital for two days.

Deep cracks had opened in Mr Gaddafi’s regime, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a bloody crackdown on protest in the capital, where cars and buildings were burned.

World leaders were outraged at the “vicious forms of repression” used against the demonstrators. Mr Gaddafi told an interviewer that he had wanted to go to the capital’s Green Square to talk to his supporters, but the rain stopped him.

“I am here to show that I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela. Don’t believe those misleading dog stations,” he said, referring to the media reports that he had left the country.

Pro-Gaddafi militia drove through Tripoli with loudspeakers and told people not to leave their homes, witnesses said, as security forces sought to keep the unrest that swept eastern parts of the country – leaving the second-largest city of Benghazi in protesters’ control – from overwhelming the capital of two million people.

Protesters called for a demonstration in Tripoli’s central Green Square and in front of Mr Gaddafi’s residence, but witnesses in various neighbourhoods described a scene of intimidation: helicopters hovering above the main seaside boulevard and pro-Gaddafi gunmen firing from moving cars and even shooting at the facades of homes to terrify the population.

Youths trying to gather in the streets scattered and ran for cover amid gunfire, according to several witnesses. They said people wept over bodies of the dead left in the street.

War planes swooped low over Tripoli on Sunday evening and snipers took up position on roofs, apparently to stop people outside the capital from joining protests, according to Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist in touch with residents.

Mr Gaddafi appeared to have lost the support of at least one major tribe, several military units and his own diplomats, including the delegation to the United Nations. Deputy UN Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi accused the longest-serving Arab leader of committing genocide against his own people in the current crisis.