Muammar Gaddafi

Tripoli, Feb. 16 (Reuters): Hundreds of people clashed with police and government supporters overnight in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, a witness and local media said, in a rare show of unrest in the oil exporting country.

Libya has been tightly controlled by leader Muammar Gaddafi for over 40 years but has also felt the ripples from popular revolts in its neighbours Egypt and Tunisia.

Libyan state television said that rallies were held in the early hours of this morning across the country in support of Gaddafi, who is Africa’s longest serving leader.

Reports from Benghazi, about 1,000km east of the Libyan capital, indicated the city was now calm but that overnight, protesters armed with stones and petrol bombs had set fire to vehicles and fought with police. They were angry over the arrest of a human rights campaigner and demanded his release.

Gaddafi opponents used the Facebook social networking site to call on people to go out onto the streets across Libya tomorrow for what they described as a “day of rage.”

Quryna newspaper, which is based in Benghazi, quoted Abdelkrim Gubaili, the director of a local hospital, as saying 38 people were injured in the clashes, most of them members of the security forces.

“Last night was a bad night,” a Benghazi resident, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters by telephone.

“There were about 500 or 600 people involved. They went to the revolutionary committee (local government headquarters) in Sabri district, and they tried to go to the central revolutionary committee ... They threw stones,” he said. “Now Benghazi is quiet. The banks are open and the students are going to school,” the same witness said later.

Bahrain rally

Protesters in Bahrain poured into the centre of the capital today to mourn a demonstrator killed in clashes with security forces. A crowd estimated at more than 1,000 people joined a winding Shia funeral procession for the man.