Scenes of horror in hospital Gaddafi troops used as base

Libyan forces were on the verge of controlling the loyalist stronghold of Sirte last night, capturing key loyalist positions and advancing on the city centre.

Finally storming Ibn Sina, Sirte’s central hospital – which had been used as a weapons cache – they found a scene of destruction and human despair.

A patient lay in his own faeces, emaciated and unconscious in the abandoned intensive care unit (ICU). Naked on a hospital trolley nearby, another had a reeking injury on his leg, which required an urgent amputation. The heart monitor beside the bed beeped loudly, ringing out across empty ward that stood partially destroyed from a bomb blast.

As fighting intensified around the city and shells hit the hospital, doctors had moved the patients to the ground floor, but the two ICU patients had been too weak to be moved.

Injured loyalist soldiers and civilian patients, some barely breathing, lined the corridors of the first floor.

“The hospital was full of wounded soldiers, and there not enough doctors; they could only administer first aid,” said Muftah Omar, 48, who had brought his injured daughter Selma to the hospital after their home was hit by a rocket. They had remained trapped inside for ten days.

“There was a long queue for the operation, there was no anaesthesiologist. Now my daughter’s internal wound is infected.”

Ahmed Khalifa, 19, had been inside the hospital for two months with a serious leg fracture. He was weak and gaunt from lack of food. A rock and a Koran lay beside his pillow. “He didn’t have water to wash his hands before prayer, so he rubbed them on the rock,” said a friend.

The hospital had been a weapons store for loyalist soldiers said patients. “Some soldiers roamed with weapons, and kept their arms here. We saw hand grenades in the intensive care unit,” said Mr Omar.

Soldiers loyal to Muammar Gaddafi had wanted to use the hospital as a vantage point from which to shoot on nearby Libyan forces said doctors and patients. “We begged and negotiated with them not to attack from here,” said Mr Omar. “Together with the doctors we overpowered them and raised the white surrender flag over the building.”

As rebels stormed the hospital, some fighters loyal to Gaddafi lay in hospital beds faking injuries to avoid capture.

In taking the facilty, fighters said they captured fifty loyalist fighters, many of them from the nearby town of Thawarga, a town that is now deserted. Commanders sought to control the pent up rage and hatred of their men towards the captives. “You dog!” shouted a fighter, throwing a punch at a captive as he was taken away.

Ripping down pictures of the fallen dictator that plastered the walls, fighters patrolled the hospital. “Libya is free. Say it!” one ordered young male patients aggressively. Wide-eyed with fear, many muttered the words, unconvinced.

Nurses hiding in the hospital basement described the horror of the past two weeks. “The bombing was so intense, it smashed the top floor. One week ago it got too bad and no one reported for duty. Kidney dialysis patients were so desperate for treatment that they came to beg the nurses back to work,” said Maria Christina Cruz, 53, from the Philippines.

Injured women hid, terrified, in a small ward in the centre of the hospital. A premature baby with a lung infection screamed in an incubator.

Fighting continued to rage around the hospital last night.

“These men know they have nothing left to live for,” said fighter Fathi Mansour, 26 of the loyalist troops. “They will either be killed or arrested. It is just a matter of time, Sirte is ours.”