| From Wednesday but a detail we hadn't noted before. |
Aid workers had earlier scrambled to embark the migrants, along with journalists and the wounded, on the ship bound for rebel-held Benghazi as the Misrata port came under bombardment from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
"The bombing has caused so many casualties among Libyans and people of other nationalities waiting for evacuation," Gemal Salem, a rebel spokesman, told Reuters. "So far we have five killed and ambulances are rushing to the scene."
The Red Star One, sent by the International Organization for Migration, picked up 800 people caught up in the civil war who had been waiting for days to escape Misrata's worsening humanitarian crisis. It had hoped to take 1,000 people.
"Hundreds of Libyan civilians had also tried to board the ship in desperation to get out of Misrata. But with a limited capacity, the ramp of the boat had to be pulled up so that the ship could pull away from the dock in safety," the IOM said.
The shelling was also hitting Misrata's Qasr Ahmad district, a mixed residential and industrial area which houses the iron and steel works in a city that has become one of the bloodiest battlefields in the two-month conflict.
Another rebel spokesman, Abdelsalem, said the five killed were African migrant workers. He said fighting was continuing in the southern neighbourhood of al-Ghiran, where rebels say pro-Gaddafi forces have been trying to advance on the city centre, and in Zawiyat al-Mahjoub to the west.
The port is a lifeline for Misrata, where food and medical supplies are low and snipers shoot from rooftops. Other rescue ships are offshore but there was no news of their movements. About 12,000 people have so far been rescued by 12 ships.
Minesweepers from the NATO coalition, whose aircraft have been bombing Libyan government military targets under a United Nations resolution, had been searching the approaches to the harbour since Monday for a drifting Gaddafi forces' mine.