Libya: Death stalks the streets in the living hell of Misrata

Published on Tuesday 12 April 2011 18:57

The sniper fire pinged and hissed down the street as the fighters advanced. Backs to the walls, the opposition unleashed a barrage of return fire at the burnt-out roof top where the Gaddafi gunman hid.

All the while, the thud of mortar rounds shook the adjacent street, and the rattle of machine guns came from the near distance.

In the besieged Libyan city of Misrata - 130 miles east of Tripoli - intense street battles took place yesterday as opposition fighters battled to clear it of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's snipers and troops.

The front line - a civilian neighbourhood along Misrata's main thoroughfare of Tripoli Street - is a devastated playground of war. Fighters battle amid crumbling houses; their windows shattered, the walls blasted with holes from rocket-propelled grenades. Garage doors, gates and fences are riddled and pockmarked with the bullet holes.

A minaret lies forlornly crumbled on the roof top of the local mosque. The streets are covered with the thick black residue of mortar attacks.

This artery to central Misrata was once a buzzing high street. Now, a sofa hangs from the broken windows of a furniture store, clothes shops are burnt-out casings, corner stores are wasted caves of contorted, melted shelves and ash.

The roof tops where women hung their washing to dry are now the dens of snipers who support Col Gaddafi's ground troops. Chickens scratch at the streets where the rebel's Toyota pick-ups with mounted machine guns patrol.

Unlike their inexperienced counterparts in Benghazi - who are prone to easily prompted retreats at the first sound of incoming fire - Misrata's rebels are hardened street fighters. For more than six weeks they have fended off Col Gaddafi's advance on the last free town in the west of the country.

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In the weeks of gun battles and street warfare, these men who began as peaceful civilian protesters have become soldiers.

Yesterday, they nonchalantly lunched on the front line, cracking jokes and eating pasta, unfazed by the shells falling around them.

Commander Tahar Mohammed, a clothes trader in peacetime, now leads the "Grand Lion" rebel battalion.

"We are running an operation to clear out the snipers from this part of Tripoli Street," he explains, standing among the burning buildings of the morning's battle.

The group had recaptured a section of Tripoli Street that was previously under the control of Col Gaddafi's forces. "We pushed them back 500 metres in four hours," he adds.

Early in the morning the rebels had sprung their multi-pronged attack.Firing heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades they cornered the snipers into one building.

"We asked the snipers to surrender, they didn't, so we shot at them. We killed eight and captured one," says fighter Sahah Mohammed Khalil.

Khalil's head is bandaged with a bloody patch where he took a piece of shrapnel.

He adds: "The snipers have rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and grenades. When one got scared, he threw a hand grenade".

The intention, say the rebels, is to clear the area, building by building, street by street.

Col Gaddafi's troops are better equipped, they say. "This is one of their RPGs - 'family size'," says Commander Tahar, showing a captured weapon.

But the opposition's morale is higher they say. "Gaddafi has the bravery of a bird, his people don't want to fight," adds Tahar.

At least 600 people have died, and 3,000 have been wounded in the weeks of fighting that have gripped the city. The vast majority are civilian, says Dr Ramadan Atewah, 55, who has been working in the city since the fighting began.

He says: "The shelling of civilians is the most pressing problem; they are being hit with mortars and rockets. They don't have the know-how to stay down, in terror they run, and that is when they get hit."

As the violence mounts, hospitals struggle to cope with the influx of civilian casualties. "There are too many, sometimes you find the patients lying in the corridors," says Atewah.

In a Red Crescent clinic nearby, Dr Mohammed Ahmed Eifagieh riffles through reams of videos on his phone displaying recent horrific surgeries he has performed.

A man's jaw flops at a sickening angle after the bullet tore through his mouth, a toddler's arm riddled with shrapnel and multiple bullet wounds. Snipers loyal to Col Gaddafi are the main problem, he says.

"They shoot indiscriminately at civilians," explains Eifagieh. "A boy bled to death in the street," he recalls. "We could have saved his life but nobody could get to him because they too would be shot."

In another Misrata medical clinic lies one of Col Gaddafi's fighters. The 19-year-old boy - who does not want his identity revealed - was a student of electrical engineering in Tripoli.

As the fighting started and his lessons were stopped he says he was forced to join Col Gaddafi troops.

"We were kept locked in the camp and trained for two weeks and then they took us to the battalion," he says.

Told only that they would be fighting foreign mercenaries, they were brought to Misrata. When they came under heavy fire from the rebels, the officer turned and ran. He followed, and was shot, apparently by his own side.

"The instructions were that nobody should go back. I lay on the ground bleeding for one and half hours.

"I haven't seen my family in more than a month," he says, breaking down into tears.