Qaddafi Holds Tripoli as Eastern Cities Fall to Opponents

Opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi consolidated control over cities in the oil-rich east while he clamped down on Tripoli, using tanks to block highways and security forces to attack residents, witnesses said.

Foreign governments began discussing possible intervention and stepped up efforts to extract their citizens from what fleeing Egyptians said is turning into a bloodbath. Egyptians returning through a Libyan checkpoint now in the hands of Qaddafi’s opponents told of his supporters, most of them foreign mercenaries, attacking anyone in the capital who was on the streets.

“It’s a massacre in there,” Mohamed Yehia, 23, said today after entering the Egyptian border town of Salloum. “He is crazy. The world must know what he’s doing to his people.”

The unrest in Africa’s third-biggest oil producer sent crude advancing for a sixth day, with Brent reaching a 30-month high of almost $120 in London. Stocks slid, with the Stoxx 600 capping its longest losing streak in almost five months. Markets are responding to concern that crude supplies may be further affected if the struggle against Qaddafi becomes more protracted or violent, possibly leading to civil war. Barclays Capital estimated that about 1 million barrels of daily oil production may have been cut.