Amid intense media coverage of violent anti-Al-Qaddafi protests throughout Libya, the nation’s besieged strongman himself apparently has a radically different view of the situation he faces. On Sunday, Mu’amar Al-Qaddafi told a Serbian television station that “Libya is absolutely peaceful.” Boasting that “the people of Libya support me,” he dismissed the mass protests and reports of opposition forces taking possession of key cities as “small groups of rebels…[that are] surrounded and will be dealt with.” Al-Qaddafi told the station that he was speaking from his Tripoli office. As for reports of as many as 1,000 deaths among demonstrators, the longtime dictator explained that “Military and police traded fire with those [small groups], those bands, but few people were killed.”