CAIRO (AP/AFP) – A defiant Moammar Khadafy vowed to fight to his “last drop of blood” and roared at supporters to strike back against Libyan protesters to defend his embattled regime Tuesday, signaling an escalation of the crackdown that has thrown the capital into scenes of mayhem, wild shooting, and bodies in the streets.

As this developed, some 1,500 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Benghazi, one of Libya's most volatile cities, were among the first to be evacuated to nearby Cairo in Egypt as tension continues to escalate, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said as Migrante-Middle East reported that 145 other Filipinos working for Al Nahar company at Nalut, Libya – whose camp is near the border of Algeria and Tunisia and about 400 km away from Tripoli – have been abandoned by their employer.

Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said another 225 OFWs are expected to arrive in the Philippines after their employers granted voluntary evacuation. She said 150 of these OFWs have already boarded two ferries in Malta and Tripoli.

Another Filipino, Rosario “Rusty” Asto, a civil engineer, was forced to stay behind in Nalut after he was refused to proceed to Tunisia apparently by either Tunisian or Libyan authorities because he did not have his passport with him.

Asto's fellow Filipino worker, Benjun Agarasu, and several expatriates from Bulgaria were allowed proceed to Tunisia.

Reports said Asto, who works for a Swedish oil company in the desert of Ghadhames, is now all by his lonesome in Nalut, said his wife Nora.

The Philippine government has already allocated R100 million for the evacuation of Filipinos from Libya.

Capture the rats
The speech of the Libyan leader – who shouted and pounded his fists on the podium – was an all-out call for his backers to impose control over the capital and take back other cities. After a week of upheaval, protesters backed by defecting army units have claimed control over almost the entire eastern half of Libya's 1,600-kilometer Mediterranean coast, including several oil-producing areas.

“You men and women who love Khadhafy ... get out of your homes and fill the streets,” he said. “Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs.”

“Capture the rats,” he said of anti-regime demonstrators.

“This is my country, my country,” the veteran Libyan leader shouted, in an often rambling and angry speech on national television Tuesday. “I will fight to the last drop of my blood.”

The eccentric former army colonel, who has ruled the oil-rich North African nation since 1969, said he would “die a martyr in the land of my ancestors” and urged his followers to demonstrate their support from Wednesday.

400 deaths
The Libyan interior ministry released the first official death toll since the unrest broke out a week ago, saying the disturbances had claimed 300 lives – 189 civilians and 111 soldiers.

Most fatalities were said to have been in second city Benghazi, in the east of the country where most of the violence has occurred, an interior ministry spokesman said.

But rights groups, however, have said the death toll could be as high as 400.

International alarm rose over the crisis, which sent oil prices soaring to the highest level in more than two years on Tuesday and sparked a scramble by European and other countries to get their citizens out of the North African nation. The United Nationas Security Council held an emergency meeting that ended with a statement condemning the crackdown, expressing "grave concern" and calling for an "immediate end to the violence" and steps to address the legitimate demands of the Libyan people.

Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel called Khadafy 's speech “very, very appalling,” saying it “amounted to him declaring war on his own people.” Libya's own deputy ambassador at the U.N., who now calls for Khadafy 's ouster, has urged the world body to enforce a no-fly zone over the country to protect protesters.

“This violence is completely unacceptable,” added Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Defection
In a sign of the extent of the breakdown in Khadafy 's regime, one of his closest associates, Abdel Fattah Younis, his interior minister and commander of the powerful Thunderbolt commando brigade, announced in Benghazi that he was defecting and other armed forces should join the revolt.

In New York, Libya's deputy UN ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi, who has called for Khadafy to step down, said he had received information that Khadafy 's collaborators have started "attacking people in all the cities in western Libya." He said those being attacked are unarmed. He said Khadafy was using foreign mercenaries to fight protesters.

“I think the genocide has started now in Libya,’ Dabbashi said. “The Khadafy statement was just code for his collaborators to start the genocide against the Libyan people. It just started a few hours ago. I hope the information I get is not accurate but if is, it will be a real genocide.”

Libyans were critical of what they saw as the lack of a forceful international response.

Dabbashi said the Security Council statement was “not strong enough” but was “a good step to stopping the bloodshed.”

Khadafy 's call for a popular attack on protesters reflected the deeply unstable nature of the system he has created over his rule – the longest of any current Arab leader. He has long kept his military and other security forces relatively weak, fearing a challenge to his rule and uncertain of loyalties in a population of multiple tribal allegiances.

Protesters control oil fields?
Protesters claim to control a string of cities, from the Egyptian border in the east – where guards at the crossing fled – to the city of Ajdabiya, about 450 miles (725 kilometers) farther west along the Mediterranean coast, said Tawfiq al-Shahbi, a protest organizer in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Ajdabiya is a key city near the oil fields of central and eastern Libya. Protesters and local tribesmen were protecting several of the fields and facilities around the city, said one resident, Ahmed al-Zawi.

Residents are also guarding one of Libya's main oil export ports, Zuweita, and the pipelines feeding into it, he said. The pipelines are off and several tankers that had been waiting in the port to load left empty, said al-Zawi, who said he visited Zuweita on Tuesday morning.

The first major protests to hit an OPEC country – and major supplier to Europe – sent oil prices to $95.42 per barrel. Only a small amount of Libya's oil production appeared to have been affected, though analysts fear that revolts will spread to OPEC heavyweights like Iran. Libya holds the most oil reserves in Africa.

Two oil companies on Tuesday suspended production in the country: Italy's Eni – the biggest energy producer in Libya, producing about a quarter of its exports – and Spain's Repsol-YPF, which produced 34,777 barrels in the country last year, about 3.8 percent of national output. A string of international oil companies have begun evacuating their expatriate workers or their families.

In the Philippines, the Department of Energy (DoE) downplayed assured supply of oil as it the country does not import oil from the conflict-ridden countries of Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain where ongoing anti-government demonstrations are threatening the stability of oil production.

Sen. Manny Villar said the government should start stitching up economic safety nets for the thousands of OFWs in the Middle East who will be forcibly repatriated as the regional conflagration escalates.

Villar said the immediate economic impact of sending home Middle East-based OFWs would be felt in the employment front since they will instantly bloat the jobless statistics.

“The government must be ready with job programs to assimilate homebound OFWs willing to get employment at once,” he said.

Sen. Loren Legarda, Senate foreign relations committee chairman, called on the national government to guarantee the safety of Filipinos by making sure that a definite plan of action is in place and ready for execution anytime as the unrest worsens in some countries in the Middle East.

As violence escalates, governments scrambled by air and sea to pick up their citizens stranded by Libya's bloody unrest Tuesday, with thousands of people crowding the airport to await evacuation and Egyptians gathering at the border to escape the chaos.

In China, officials said they will send a jet, ships, and fishing vessels from nearby waters to violence-wracked Libya on Wednesday to help evacuate more than 30,000 Chinese living there, the government and state media said.

A chartered Air China jet was to leave Beijing on Wednesday for Athens, as the Chinese government awaits permission to land in the north African country, where hundreds have been killed in an uprising against Khadhafy.

The government has set up an emergency center headed by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang to coordinate the evacuation of Chinese nationals, as well as those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Peru suspends ties
Peru suspended diplomatic ties with Libya on Tuesday, becoming the first nation to take such a measure amid a bloody crackdown on the uprising.

“'Peru is suspending all diplomatic relations with Libya until the violence against the people ceases,” Peruvian President Alan Garcia said, according to a press statement.

“Peru also strongly protests against the repression unleashed by the dictatorship of Moamer Kadhafi against the people who are demanding democratic reforms to change the government which has been led for 40 years by the same person.”

Garcia said Peru would ask the UN Security Council to set up a no-fly zone in Libyan airspace so that warplanes cannot be used against the Libyan people. (With reports from Edd K. Usman, Ellson A. Quismorio, Samuel P. Medenilla, Roy Mabasa, and Mario B. Casayuran)