The witness told that several protesters, who had been camped inside and outside the mosque while demanding the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi, had been killed or seriously wounded in Thursday's attack.
The witness from Zawiya said the military used anti-aircraft missiles and automatic weapons and attacked the protesters around 09:00.
The witness who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said the attack came a day after a Gaddafi aide identified as Abdullah Megrahi came to the city and warned the protesters to “leave or you will see a massacre" .
"We told him we are not leaving, either death or victory," the witness said.
He expressed the army attack from some Europe countries on people. He added several Libyan military units have sided with the protesters since the uprising began on February 15.
"What is happening is horrible, those Libyan who attacked us are not the mercenaries; they are sons of our country," the witness said while sobbing. "Now there is heavy gunfire. They bombed the minaret of the mosque."
He said that there are no police in the city, which is located near a key oil port and refineries on the Mediterranean, so people had formed committees to guard their houses and buildings. He also said Gadhafi loyalists had attacked Chinese and Egyptian employees of construction companies in the city.
The report couldn't immediately be confirmed.
International momentum has been building for action to punish Gaddafi’s regime for the bloody crackdown it has unleashed against the protesters.
Another proposal gaining some traction was for the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent it using warplanes to hit protesters. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that if reports of such strikes are confirmed, "there's an immediate need for that level of protection".
Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed in the violence in Libya were "credible," although he stressed information about casualties was incomplete. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at nearly 300, according to a partial count.
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