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BENGHAZI, Libya — Thousands of mercenary and other forces struck back at a tightening circle of rebellions around the Libyan capital, Tripoli, on Thursday, trying to fend off an uprising against the 40-year rule of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who blamed the revolt on "hallucinogenic" drugs and Osama bin Laden.
The bloodiest fighting centered on Zawiya, a gateway city to the capital, just 30 miles west of Tripoli. Early Thursday, Gadhafi's forces unleashed an assault using automatic weapons and an anti-aircraft gun on a mosque occupied by rebels armed with hunting rifles, Libyans who fled the country said.
Gadhafi, in a rambling 30-minute phone call to a Libyan television station, blamed the uprising on Osama bin Laden, saying he had drugged the people, giving them "hallucinogenic pills in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe."
The choice of peace or war, he said, belonged to the people of Zawiya, which had become the focus of many of the thousands of forces he has called on to reinforce his stronghold in the capital.
"Zawiya is slipping from our hands because your sons are listening to bin Laden," he ranted, adding a bizarre and ironic taunt later in the speech that "a real man doesn't use arms against innocent people."
Fighting intensified in other cities near Tripoli as well — Misurata, 130 miles to the east, and Sabratha, about 50 miles west. Zuara, 75 miles west of the capital, had fallen to antigovernment militias, other reports said.
Residents of Tripoli, reached by telephone, said the uprising appeared to be headed toward a decisive stage, with Gadhafi fortifying his stronghold and protesters gearing up for their first organized demonstration after days of spontaneous rioting and bloody crackdowns.
The death toll has been impossible to determine, but is clearly many hundreds. Even before the battles Thursday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini estimated it at more than 1,000. The uprising is the deadliest of the rebellions inspired across the Middle East by the largely peaceful revolts that ousted the former rulers of Egypt and Tunisia.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council agreed Thursday to consider options against Gadhafi's regime that could include sanctions, while Switzerland ordered any assets belonging to Gadhafi frozen.
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