— Libyan troops, Bahrain security clamp down —
U.S. President Barack Obama urged the governments of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen on Friday to show restraint in dealing with protests that have erupted in their countries.
"I am deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. The United States condemns the use of violence against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur," the president said in a statement read to reporters by White House press secretary Jay Carney.
"The United States urges the governments of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen to show restraint in responding to peaceful protests and to respect the rights of their people," Obama said.
Soldiers sought to put down unrest in Libya's second city on Friday and opposition forces said they were fighting troops for control of a nearby town after crackdowns which Human Rights Watch said killed 24 people.
Protests inspired by the revolts that brought down long-serving rulers of neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia have led to violence unprecedented in Muammar Gaddafi's 41 years as leader of the oil exporting country.
Opponents of Gaddafi had designated Thursday a day of rage to try to emulate uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East. Unrest continued well into the night.
The demonstrations have been focused in the country's east, including its second largest city, Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has been historically weaker and is largely cut-off from international media.
"Last night was very hard, there were a lot of people in the street, thousands of people. I saw soldiers in the street," a resident who lives on Benghazi's main thoroughfare, Nasser Street, told Reuters.
"I heard shooting. I saw one person fall down (from a gunshot wound) but I don't have a figure for casualties."
The privately-owned Quryna newspaper, based in Benghazi, said security forces overnight fired live bullets at protesters, killing 14 of them. It published photographs of several people lying on hospital stretchers with bloodstained bandages.
Two Swiss-based exile groups said anti-government forces, joined by defecting police, were battling with security forces for control of the town of Al Bayda, 200 km northeast of Benghazi and scene of deadly clashes this week.
A opposition activist in Al Bayda told Reuters the town was calm after the burial of 14 people killed in Thursday's protests. "A massacre took place here yesterday," said the man. The death toll he gave could not be verified.
Ashour Shamis, a London-based Libyan journalist, said protesters had stormed Benghazi's Kuwafiyah prison on Friday and freed dozens of political prisoners. Quryna said 1,000 prisoners had escaped and 150 had been recaptured.
CALM IN TRIPOLI
The capital Tripoli has been calmer, with Gaddafi supporters staging demonstrations of their own. The leader appeared in the early hours of Friday briefly at Green Square in the centre of Tripoli, surrounded by crowds of supporters. He did not speak.
A sermon at Friday prayers in Tripoli, broadcast on state television, urged people to ignore reports in foreign media "which doesn't want our country to be peaceful, which … is the aim of Zionism and imperialism, to divide our country."
Gaddafi's opponents, using social media networks Facebook and Twitter, had called for new protests after Friday prayers, when most Libyan men visit the mosque.
Two people in Benghazi, which is about 1,000 km (600 miles) east of Tripoli, told Reuters that Saadi Gaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader and ex-professional soccer player in Italy, had taken over command of the city.
Libya-watchers say the situation is different from Egypt, because Gaddafi has oil cash to smooth over social problems. Gaddafi is respected in much of the country, though support for him is weaker in the Cyrenaica region around Benghazi.
BAHRAIN FORCES FIRE ON PROTESTERS
Bahraini security forces shot at protesters near Pearl Square and wounded at least 23, a former Shi'ite lawmaker said, a day after police forcibly cleared a protest camp from the traffic circle in Manama.
"We think it was the army," said Sayed Hadi, of Wefaq, the main Shi'ite bloc which resigned from parliament on Thursday. He said he knew of 23 wounded people.
The shooting occurred on a day of mourning on which Shi'ites buried four people killed in the police raid on Pearl Square.
It also coincided with an appeal for calm and dialogue from the crown prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa.
About 1,000 emotional people gathered outside a hospital, some spilling into the corridors as casualties were brought in, including one with a bloody sheet over his head. Some men wept.
Another Wefaq MP, Jalal Firooz, said demonstrators had been holding a memorial for a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at them. Police had no comment.
The crowd then made for Pearl Square, where army troops who took it over after the police raid opened fire, Firooz said.
Four people were killed and 231 wounded when riot police raided the protest camp in the early hours of Thursday.
Soldiers in tanks and armoured vehicles later took control of the square, which the mainly Shi'ite protesters had hoped to use as a base like Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11.
Shi'ites form 70 percent of Bahraini nationals ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty.
The Gulf Arab state is a close ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia, which see it as a bulwark against Shi'ite Iran.
The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which projects U.S. power across the Middle East and Central Asia, is based near Manama.
The unrest in Bahrain, a regional banking hub and a minor oil producer, has shaken foreign confidence in the economy.
The cost of insuring Bahraini sovereign debt against default for five years hit fresh 19-month highs, and the instrument was quoted at 310 basis points, up 49 from Thursday's close.
Saudi Arabia fears unrest spreading to its own Shi'ite community, a minority there but concentrated in the eastern oil-producing area of the world's biggest crude exporter.
