ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
21February2011 3:00pmEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Muammar Qaddafi's 42-year rule of Libya appeared to have begun disintegrating Monday, Feb. 21, as civil war swept the country with no signs of him quitting. Instead, he ordered the army to redouble its brutal assaults on the opposition. The Air Force began bombing 
crowds at random while army tanks and armored vehicles blasted them with live ammunition - not just in the insurgent eastern provinces of Cyrenaica, but the capital of Tripoli and its environs too.
There, helicopter gunships aimed heavy machine fire into the main market, the Souk al Jumma, while the first tribal militias loyal to Qaddafi to arrive in the capital from the Sahara fought alongside the army. Casualties soared to an estimated 600, with 250 in Tripoli alone as Qaddafi rallied for a bloody civil war that could linger for years.
High officials of his regime and businessmen began fleeing Tripoli aboard Libyan Air Force fighter jets and helicopters which landed Monday at Malta's MIA international airport. Government officials in Valetta said the pilots had defected rather than bomb demonstrators, while all the Libyan arrivals asked for political asylum and more flights were on the way.
The United States and European Union have concentrated airplanes and ferries on the island ready to evacuate the thousands of their citizens employed in Libya, most in the oil and gas fields, starting Monday night, while the price of crude oil shot up 5 percent.
The 48 hours during which Qaddafi dropped out of sight from Saturday were spent, DEBKAfile's sources report, in mustering embers of loyal Libyan tribes to fight along the remnants of the army for his reinstatement. There are no signs he has any intention of following in the footsteps of the Tunisians and Egyptian presidents and step down. (read full report)
