Angry Students Attack Libya Number Two in Benghazi

The deputy head of Libya's National Transitional Council was manhandled by protesters on Thursday in the cradle of the uprising that ousted Moammar Gadhafi last year, witnesses said.

Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, who also serves as official spokesman for the interim government, had to be escorted away after being mobbed by angry students at the University of Ghar Younis in Libya's second-largest city Benghazi, the NTC's wartime base.

Ghoga escaped unharmed from the assault but had to endure a tirade of abuse from the protesters who accused him of opportunism because of his belated defection from Gadhafi regime, the witnesses said.

Students have been demonstrating on the Ghar Younis campus for weeks to protest against the perceived lack of transparency of the administration that took over after Gadhafi’s ouster and the prominent position in it of a number of his longtime lieutenants.