TRIPOLI, Libya – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s regime on Wednesday offered a $400,000 bounty on the head of Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, opposition leader and chief of a self-styled transitional government based in the east, as Gadhafi loyalists continued to wage a merciless military and propaganda campaign against the rebellion.

In a defiant speech broadcast early Wednesday morning, Gadhafi derided his opponents, who now control the eastern half of the country, as “traitors” and blamed foreigners and al-Qaida for perpetrating the unrest roiling the North African state he has ruled for more than four decades.

Additional Photos

Men from Bangladesh, who used to work in Libya and fled the unrest in the country, carry their belongings as they arrive in a refugee camp at the Tunisia-Libyan border on Wednesday. The Associated Press

The harsh tone of the speech, delivered late Tuesday to young members of the Zintan tribe in the capital city of Tripoli and broadcast on state television hours later, appeared to put to rest uncorroborated rumors reported in some international media that the 68-year-old leader was considering stepping down or forging a compromise with a rebel government based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

FIGHTING GOES ON

Meanwhile, reports of bloodshed continued in two rebel-controlled coastal enclaves in western Libya. Opposition-held Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital, remained under siege, with telecommunications cut off. Libyans with friends and relatives in the city of 210,000 struggled to get information about those caught up in the fighting.

Ahmed, a 28-year-old law student in Tripoli, said he managed to speak with two friends Tuesday and Wednesday trying to escape the city, which was bombarded with artillery and tank fire on Tuesday and had no running water or electricity for several days.

“There is a lack of everything: food and medicines,” said Ahmed, who asked that his last name not be published.

“There’s no gas in the city,” said Sawsen Abdel-Hafidh Ouanis, a 45-year-old woman in rebel-controlled Benghazi whose two youngest daughters, Nada and Mawada, are visiting her pregnant eldest daughter, Nairouz, a 22-year-old Zawiya resident. She said her daughters managed to get a phone call to her Tuesday evening.

They described intense shelling and artillery fire and aerial bombardment directed at civilian residences in the city as well as a campaign of kidnappings directed at the relatives of those fighting against Gadhafi’s authority.

In rebel-controlled Misrata, about 120 miles east of Tripoli, a doctor reached by telephone said the city’s main hospital is treating a nonstop flow of patients suffering from gunshot wounds. “I see so many patients I have lost count,” he said.

Since the beginning of the uprising, which reached Misrata on Feb. 19, about 350 people have died and 1,000 have suffered injuries in the fighting there.

The accounts from Misrata and Zawiya could not be verified because of government restrictions placed on foreign journalists, who were not allowed to travel to either city. State television repeatedly broadcast claims that Zawiya has been retaken and showed footage of Gadhafi supporters cheering in a rural setting that the broadcast described as Zawiya.

GADHAFI WARNING

In his address to the Zintan tribe, Gadhafi did not speak about the strife in the two cities. The Libyan leader singled out the United States, Britain and France — which are contemplating the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya — as seeking to control the country’s oil as part of an imperialist scheme.

“The U.K., France, U.S. and colonialist states were wondering how a bunch of Libyans could take control of their own petroleum,” he said. “Their goal is to return. Now, 90 percent of Libya’s petroleum (income) goes to Libya and 10 percent goes to the American company. They want to reverse this. … The British want to return to their bases again.”

He referred to an alleged conversation between a British diplomat and an opposition figure recently in rebel-controlled Benghazi as evidence that the West is plotting to establish dominion over Libya, which suffered under Italy’s brutal rule in the 1920s and 1930s.

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