TOBRUK, Libya (AFP) – Eastern Libya was in full revolt on Thursday as veteran strongman Moamer Kadhafi made good his bloodcurdling vow to cling to power by any means, prompting a desperate expatriate exodus.
Thousands scrambled to flee what former colonial ruler Italy said was a "bloodbath" of hundreds of protesters in the oil-rich north African state, parts of which have fallen to opposition control and others into lawlessness.
US President Barack Obama described the iron-fisted crackdown as "outrageous", leading an international outcry against a regime that just a few weeks ago was slowly recovering from virtual pariah status in the West.
"There is no going back. even if we all die, at least children will not have to live with him," a Kadhafi opponent said in eastern Libya.
"Our goal now is Tripoli," said another dissident at a town hall meeting in Al-Baida addressed by defecting generals from Kadhafi's increasingly fractured armed forces. "If Tripoli cannot liberate itself."
In the capital, sustained gunfire was heard in the eastern suburbs during the night. On Thursday morning, the streets were virtually deserted.
One of Kadhafi's seven sons, Saadi, told the Financial Times that after four decades in power, his father could retreat to a "big father" advisory role under a new government.
But the 68-year-old Kadhafi himself is hardly talking of retreat, vowing in a fiery televised address on Tuesday to purge opponents "house by house" and "inch by inch".
Former minister justice minister Mustapha Abdeljalil, who quit over a death toll now running into the hundreds, predicted that Kadhafi would follow in Adolph Hitler's footsteps by committing suicide, rather than give up power.
"He is going to go like Hitler, he is going to commit suicide," Abdeljalil told Sweden's Expressen referring to the World War II German leader.
As senior generals and Kadhafi comrades from his 1969 coup have switched sides to join the revolt, his opponents appeared in control of Libya's coastal east, from the Egyptian border through the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, towns made famous as a key battleground during World War II.
Journalists saw regime opponents -- many of them armed -- all along the highway that hugs the Mediterranean coast.
Saudi King Abdullah, mindful of anger building in his own country, decreed an increase in social benefits as he returned to a Middle East rocked by anti-regime uprisings after three months abroad.
Abdullah, the 86-year-old monarch of the world's leading oil exporter, was returning from back surgery in New York and recuperation in Morocco.
Elsewhere in the turbulent region, demonstrators in Yemen and Bahrain defiantly faced down teetering governments.
In Yemen, thousands of demonstrators vowed to keep protesting after government loyalists shot dead two of them, as deep fissures appeared in President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime.
Saleh, in the US "war on terror", ordered his security forces to offer "full protection" to his opponents and supporters alike, state media said.
Undeterred by reports of carnage in Libya, Bahrainis vowed not to budge from the capital Manama's Pearl Square, the heart of their protests, despite the release of leading Shiite opposition activists and renewed calls from King Hamad for talks.
Obama, in his first televised comments on the Libya crisis, said: "The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous, and it is unacceptable... This violence must stop."
The European Union is drawing up sanctions against Libya that could include an assets freeze, a visa ban and legal prosecution for regime leaders, a diplomat said.
Oil prices hit their highest levels in more than two years amid the turmoil in Africa's fourth largest producer.
The cost of a barrel of benchmark Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April reached $119.79 in London before falling back slightly.
As international condemnation rained down on Kadhafi, European leaders braced for a coming tide of Libyan refugees across the Mediterranean sea.
Thousands of Libyans headed to the country's borders with Egypt and Tunisia to try to escape what Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described as a "a catastrophic humanitarian crisis" in the making.
About 5,000 people have arrived at the border with Tunisia and 15,000 at the border with Egypt, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters that he feared 300,000 Libyans would attempt to flee to Europe.
A flight bringing stranded Britons from Libya arrived in London as a second charter plane took off from Tripoli.
"Libya is descending into hell," said passenger Helena Sheehan. "It's absolute chaos. There's just thousands and thousands of people trying to get out."
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