TOBRUK, Libya – Dictator Moammar Gadhafi vowed Tuesday to “die as a martyr” rather than surrender power, as he sought to rally supporters against a growing uprising that has taken over much of eastern Libya and won the backing of some army units and government officials.

In a defiant, rambling speech in the capital, Tripoli, the army colonel who has ruled for nearly 42 years appealed to supporters to take to the streets “in order to cleanse Libya, home by home, village by village,” of what he described as a misguided movement inspired by foreigners.

But in a sign that his exhortations were falling on deaf ears, Interior Minister Abdel Fattah Younis, the commander of a powerful commando brigade and one of Gadhafi’s closest associates, announced his defection in the protester-held city of Benghazi and urged other military units to join the revolt, The Associated Press reported.

Gadhafi’s justice minister also has defected, along with several ambassadors, including the Libyan ambassador to the United States.

The defections of police, border guards and soldiers were evident on Libya’s eastern border with Egypt, where reporters were welcomed into the country Tuesday without visa procedures or passport controls.

Young defectors showed cellphone videos of repression in the eastern Libyan towns of Baida and Benghazi, where they said African “mercenaries” hired by Gadhafi shot down scores of men, women and children. They told of rapes, looting and bloody killings over the past week.

Most said they left their posts when a relative or neighbor was killed in what they described as massacres of demonstrators in eastern towns and the capital following a popular revolt that started Feb. 15.

Attiya el-Sabr, 32, a border guard, said he defected Feb. 17 after his brother-in-law was shot in Tobruk.

“The killing of innocents by the thousands” made him switch sides, he said. “Libya is in a security vacuum, and it’s uncontrolled now. The civilian people protect the area.”

Defecting army units have helped the protesters claim control of nearly the entire eastern half of Libya’s 1,000-mile Mediterranean coast, including several major oil fields, AP said.

Younis, who had backed the 1969 coup that brought Gadhafi to power, said in a statement that he has resigned all of his posts out of conviction that the protesters have “just demands.”

Among the diplomats who also have resigned was Ali al-Essawi, the Libyan ambassador to India. He charged Tuesday that the government had used fighter jets to bomb civilians and hired foreign mercenaries to shoot protesters.

Human Rights Watch said nearly 300 people have been killed, according to a partial count, some of them reportedly in a rampage by pro-Gadhafi militiamen who shot from vehicles at people in the streets and in their homes.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the violence and demanded that the Libyan government end it. She told reporters Tuesday at the State Department the “entire international community” agrees that “the violence must stop, and the government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of all of its citizens.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Gadhafi’s speech “very, very appalling” and said it amounted to “declaring war on his own people.”

Meanwhile, Libya’s growing crisis was spreading anxiety about the security of the OPEC member’s approximately 1.2 million barrels a day of oil exports, driving up crude oil prices on world markets.

During his disjointed, fist-pounding speech, Gadhafi, 68, charged that youthful demonstrators against his regime were “manipulated” by people from neighboring Tunisia, where massive protests last month chased the entrenched president from power. Gadhafi showed no regret for his security forces’ violent crackdown against demonstrators, at one point reading from a green-covered book that listed the death penalty for various crimes against the state.

“It is not possible that I leave this place,” Gadhafi said. “I will die as a martyr at the end.” He described himself as “a fighter, a revolutionary from tents,” but denied responsibility for the violence even as he issued a warning.

“I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired,” he said. “When I do, everything will burn.”

Wearing a brown turban and cloak, Gadhafi spoke from the lobby of his bombed-out former residence, which was struck in a 1986 airstrike by U.S. and British warplanes in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque by Libyan agents.

State TV, meanwhile, showed a crowd of Gadhafi supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square, raising his portrait and waving flags as they swayed to music after the address.

In Benghazi, however, the speech was dismissed.

Residents said Libya’s second-largest city was under the control of the protesters and that the streets were calm. Military leaders, police and other security units appeared to be supporting the opposition. Citizens were on the streets protecting their neighborhoods, and banks and schools were expected to reopen in the next few days.

In telephone interviews, Benghazi residents described a sense that they had triumphed over Gadhafi and were no longer under his thumb.

“This is free Libya,” declared Amal Bugaigis, 50, a lawyer. “Security forces and the people in Benghazi are together. We are now one. . . . There is no more Gadhafi.”

She said she was no longer afraid of Gadhafi and that he no longer had any influence among the people and security forces in the city of more than 670,000 people.

“In Benghazi, I am quite sure he cannot do anything,” said Bugaigis. “A lot of people and the army are now controlling the place, but they are all with us. We trust them.”