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| Africa North |
| Fleeing Residents Say Al Qathafi Loyalists Killing People in Sirte |
| 2011-09-24 |
| [Tripoli Post] Fleeing residents from Sirte, which is still controlled by deposed Libyan leader Muammar Al Qadaffy ...whose instability has been an inspiration to dictators everywhere... loyalists, have alleged that his forces have been executing residents suspected of sympathising with Libya's National Transitional Council, NTC forces and backing the country's interim government, Rooters reports. NTC forces have surrounded the city on the Mediterranean coast about 450km east of Tripoli for a week, but say their progress has been stymied largely because there are many civilians still inside the city, where residents report shortages of basic goods. Sirte is Al Qadaffy's hometown and one of the last two remaining bastions in Libya still held by his loyalists. As hundreds of civilians continued to pour out of the city in cars and pickups loaded with mattresses and food, claiming that the Al Qadaffy forces were moving around through the streets "like gangs," the NTC forces kept firing their machine guns while and trying to avoid the incoming rockets that have been crashing on the city's outskirts. On of the fleeing residents told Rooters that there have been executions. He reportedly named two men who he said had been executed on Thursday. He had also witnessed executions in front of the house of a local family, whose name he gave as Safruny. An NTC commander on the outskirts of Sirte, separately showed Rooters a handwritten list of families whose members were said to have been executed in Sirte. The list, which he said he compiled with information from people inside the city, included the Safruny family. He said other attacks on suspected NTC sympathisers had been carried out. They include families linked to Misrata. The fleeing resident said they had been targeted particularly by the Al Qadaffy loyalists. The port city of Misrata west of Sirte withstood a devastating siege earlier in the Libyan civil war that killed more than 1,000 residents. Most of the fighters now surrounding Sirte have come from Misrata, some of them among the NTC forces also saying they had family stuck inside but had no way of communicating with them.. Humanitarian groups have expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... about the situation in Sirte, and the fears have been compounded by reports from NTC fighters who say their family members inside have been prevented from leaving. Some of the families still inside the city wanting to escape are afraid of coming out and being detected by the enemy and executed by them, reports say. Al Qadaffy's front man Moussa Ibrahim, reportedly told Rooters that it was the anti-Al Qadaffy forces, and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... warplanes, which were killing people in Sirte, not the other way around. In a satellite phone call to Rooters he said that "between yesterday (Wednesday) and this morning (Thursday), 151 non-combatants were killed inside their homes as the Grad rockets ...Soviet-developed 122-mm rockets, usually launched from trucks. Newer versions are reported to have a range of up to 30 km.... and other explosives fell upon their heads." He added that the city hospital stopped functioning altogether, and that, "patients died simply because nothing can be done to help them." With journalists not allowed inside Sirte, accounts from inside the city cannot be independently verified. |
| Posted by:Fred |