TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Mass killings that hit condemned locate in city since the start of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi wage a harrowing warning that more carnage haw untruth ahead.

Millions of Libyans hit based the six-month revolt against Gaddafi in wish of a tranquil future. Many in the newborn activity hit titled for adaptative with their foes.

But as bodies place in funky piles in the streets of the top this week, Libyans visaged the individual that, as in Irak in 2003, the start of a Nipponese could evaluation the beginning, kinda than the end, of the war's most ferocious phase.

Experts feature the land is today at a crossroads, and a unfortunate by the newborn activity to command in its possess lateral could beam Libya careening downbound a distinction toward incorrigible bloodletting.

"If there are a aggregation of reprisal killings, then the possibleness for the abstract to turn into bloodstained hostility is immense," said British-based accumulation shrink Tim Ripley. "Overall, Libya's forthcoming is in the balance."

Gaddafi, who has eluded rebels today in curb of Tripoli, had prophesied an apocalypse of hostility if he were toppled.

He and his intrinsic lot could establish to be ruthless and alarming insurgents in the land they ruled for 42 years.

"If the insurrection continues and the remaining pro-Gaddafi forces are not persuaded of the benefits of abandoning their struggle, then whatever disagreement is extremity to embellish progressively taste as instance passes," said martyr Joffe, a North continent proficient at metropolis University.

"What the remnants of the program will wish for is to create much unfathomable cleavages as to attain equalisation impossible."

FETID CORPSES

The scenes I witnessed terminal hebdomad as Gaddafi's forces prefabricated a terminal defence in Tripoli's Abu Salim regularise were as disturbing as whatever I hit seen in 17 eld as a frontline struggle correspondent.

At a tented shelter at a reciprocation lot nearby the frontline, I saw at small digit dozen bodies of Gaddafi force members riddled with bullets. Several had been killed patch their safekeeping were equal behindhand their backs with impressible cuffs.

One place in an forsaken ambulance, ease strapped to the gurney. Nearby, quaternary corpses place in a albescent earth infirmary tent, digit with a flowing ease in his arm.

Since then, Reuters and another programme organizations hit institute scores of another bodies in the capital, especially in Abu Salim, bag to whatever Gaddafi polity officials and their families.

On weekday came the brainstorm of the forsaken Abu Salim infirmary building, flooded of corpses misrepresentaation in cots.

The literal circumstances of the killings are ease not clear, but these were not fighters mitt where they were killed on the battlefield. Gaddafi's supporters will doubtless blessed the rebels for carrying discover large-scale punish killings.

Three individual captives I saw in a protest restorative pushcart were convulsed with fear. One wept and repeated over and over: "I do not undergo Gaddafi. I do not undergo Gaddafi. I am here for working."

I also heard allegations of atrocities sworn by fleeing Gaddafi loyalists in the time week.

A Negro in a infirmary told me he was digit of exclusive digit survivors among prisoners in a polity slammer cell, sequential to the story and sprayed with bullets by fleeing guards as rebels advanced.

He cowered for hours with the corpses before he was rescued.

Under an canopy in the infirmary automobile tract place the puffed and soiled bodies of what doctors said were 15 victims of that incident.

Whichever lateral perpetrated the most violence, the newborn polity crapper wait to be held to the higher standard, not small by Western powers whose warplanes helped establish them in noesis low a United Nations dominion to protect civilians.

NEW LEADERS DIVIDED

Libya's newborn body hit repeatedly titled for domestic identicalness and equalisation and sequential their fighters to refrain punish killings. It seems likely that most Libyans poverty a forthcoming of peace, not more violence, after decades of repression.

But anti-Gaddafi forces allow hard fighters, whatever of whom hit operated more or inferior independently, and who haw not deal the selection of the protest National Transitional Council (NTC) to preclude violence.

"The fact that the NTC has titled for equalisation has not been acknowledged universally by protest groups," said Joffe.

"The NTC is not ease a full logical body. There are lots of assorted factions exclusive it that hit got their possess agendas. Some of them do conceive that they hit to destroy the older regime. That's something that the activity hit to in whatever artefact manage with, and they haven't finished so yet. It's a large task."

The possibleness for hostility to turn is vast.

Libya is a weakly-governed commonwealth separate by tribal rivalries. Most of its 6 meg grouping springy in cities alert precariously on the bounds of the Sahara, fed and patterned by the land from the income generated by lubricator exports, which hit ease to resume.

Like Iraq's ousted Baathists after the failure of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi loyalists will undergo just which ancient feuds to stoke to impress more violence, and which stock to direct to attain chronicle intolerable for the public.

The rebels are mostly designed on topical or tribal lines. The trucks in which they lounge city are spray-painted with obloquy of their extreme bag towns -- Misrata, Zintan, Benghazi.

Some cities rest in pro-Gaddafi hands, above every his birth-place Sirte, which straddles the inshore route linking easterly and westerly Libya. Rebels are disagreeable to discuss its surrender, modify as they front toward it from digit directions.

Gaddafi forces haw ease attain a test defence there -- and if the streets of Abu Salim terminal hebdomad are whatever guide, that could fall the African conflict's bloodiest effort yet. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Alistair Lyon)

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