11 October 2011

Sounds like Berlin, circa 1945

Kareem Fahim has an article in The New York Times about Libya:
Former rebel fighters battled their way into the heart of Sirte, seizing a sumptuous conference center used by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi to entertain heads of state, but more recently by his loyalists as a base for their fierce defense of this city, his birthplace.
The anti-Qaddafi fighters also captured the nearby Ibn Sina hospital, which had been beseiged for weeks. Medical workers at the hospital, which had no water, electricity, or oxygen and was severely short of medicines, said that most of the doctors had fled. Artillery shells had struck the hospital’s upper floors, and patients had been moved to a hallway on the first floor, where they languished under dirty blankets.
The advances by the former rebels came after three days of intense fighting that included some of the Libyan conflict’s bloodiest battles to date. More than thirty anti-Qaddafi fighters were killed and more than four hundred wounded over the three days; the number of casualties on the loyalist side was not known.
Sirte (aka Surt) on the central coast and Bani Walid in the west are the last two remaining bastions for Qaddafi loyalists in Libya. The tenacious defense of the city has convinced anti-Qaddafi commanders that the colonel or one of his sons, possibly Muatassim el-Qaddafi, is hiding in the city.
Anti-Qaddafi fighters were finally speaking confidently about their chances of finally taking the city, as a coordinated ring of troops closed in on loyalists in their remaining pockets. But, as night fell, the former rebels were losing ground again, retreating from positions around the hospital as sniper fire and mortar rounds echoed through the emptied wards.
For two days, the revolutionaries had been stuck outside the Ouagadougou Convention Center, a sprawling complex of modern white buildings that Colonel Qaddafi used to stake his claim as a visionary leader of Africa and the Arab world by conducting lavish bilateral and international summit meetings. The colonel’s visitors were able to completely avoid contact with the realities of Libya, traveling from the airport along a short highway to the convention center while surrounded by high concrete walls.
Fighters sheltered behind those walls as the sounds of rifle fire echoed and bullets kicked up dirt in a nearby field. Loyalist snipers near the convention center hit their targets with ruthless accuracy, firing into clusters of fighters who tried to advance through a green gate, hitting one man in the head and another in the neck.
At a nearby field hospital, Abdullah Abu Aouf kept the tally of injured and dead in a brown leather book, recording one of the conflict’s bloodiest days in blue ink: seventeen former rebels dead, more than 250 wounded.
Using tanks, rocket launchers, and mortars, anti-Qaddafi fighters from Misurata in the west tried to dislodge the snipers from the blocks of brown apartment houses where they were stationed. Some of their rockets hit the buildings, but several times their errant firing hit the ground in front of them or barely missed comrades in trucks nearby. As plumes of smoke rose from the apartment blocks, the loyalists struck back with mortar rounds, landing at least one among spectators watching the battle from a hill.
The Misurata fighters were joined in their attack by fighters from eastern Libya who had taken up positions near a gutted luxury hotel on the ocean. A commander, Hassan el-Faytouri, said there was a “ninety-percent chance” that Muatassim el-Qaddafi was still in the city, directing the loyalists.
His capture would have special significance for el-Faytouri and his men: Qaddafi was believed to have commanded the government’s brigades in the east during assaults on Benghazi, Ajdabiya, and the oil towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf. “We’ve waited this long,” el-Faytouri said. “Now, we don’t want to destroy the city.”
As the rebels gained ground, the extent of the damage to the city became clear. Some parts were in fairly good shape, like the residential district called the 700 area. Fighters there gathered outside tidy one-story homes abandoned in such a rush that cars, chicken coops, and toiletries were left behind.
The brown buildings used by the snipers were in far worse shape. Almost all were punctured by bullets or heavier weapons, and some were flattened entirely, possibly by NATO bombs.
Anti-Qaddafi fighters wandered the grounds of the convention center, stealing golf carts and ripping down posters of African leaders who had visited. Three fighters from Ajdabiya walked the red-carpeted halls in disbelief. “We only saw this place on television,” one man said.
Anti-Qaddafi commanders said that, when they took over the hospital, they arrested nearly two dozen loyalist soldiers, including some posing as patients. The staff spoke of harrowing weeks at the hospital, where a nurse was killed by shelling and the intensive care unit was destroyed, Dr. Abdul Moneim al-Mabsout said.
Among the patients in the hospital hallway were two young boys who were badly injured while playing on their street. Their fathers said they were not sure whether a NATO airstrike or a rocket wounded the boys. One, a three-year-old named Mohammed, lost his vision in one eye, and both his legs were broken.
Nasser Misrati, a commander, walked down the hall asking patients and their relatives where they were from and what had happened to them. “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked Mohammed’s father, Omar Ibrahim. “We only came to liberate you from the ruthless gang.” Minutes later, the hospital was being fired on, and the fighters from Misurata jumped into their trucks and fled.
Rico says they forgot to Qaddafi-duck... (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

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