seasea: Libya

显示标签为“Libya”的博文。显示所有博文

2011年6月18日星期六

U.S. Is Paying European Teams to Hunt Stray Munitions in Libya

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is paying British and Swiss mine-clearing groups nearly $1 million to search for loose antiaircraft missiles in Libya and dispose of them, so they do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

The State Department’s hiring of the teams was prompted by fears that terrorists could use scavenged man-portable air defense systems, known as Manpads, to attack civilian aircraft around the world.

The Libyan military had amassed nearly 20,000 of the weapons before the popular uprising began in March. Most of them are still held by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but some bases and ammunition dumps in contested or rebel-held areas have been looted, and an unknown number of the weapons have gone astray.

The search teams, who will also keep an eye out for mines and other deadly munitions, will be allowed to work in rebel-held areas away from active combat zones. American and allied authorities have told Libyan opposition figures that their cooperation would be a factor in decisions about future aid, according to American and United Nations officials who are familiar with the discussions.

“From the U.S. point of view, it was an issue of paramount importance,” said Justin Baker, officer-in-charge of the United Nations Mine Action Service, which is overseeing the weapons disposal effort in Libya. “The Libyans seemed to get the big picture of what was necessary to present a credible international face.”

The disposal effort will not affect areas or munitions still under the Qaddafi government’s control. “I can’t imagine the U.S. can do anything about Qaddafi’s inventory until they defeat him or negotiate his exit,” said Matthew Schroeder, an arms expert with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “But even without that, securing any Manpads loose in Libya is a good thing.”

The Obama administration mentioned the anti-Manpads effort in its report to Congress this week defending the legality of its intervention in Libya. The report included classified documents detailing a “threat assessment of Manpads, ballistic missiles and chemical weapons in Libya.”

Most American and NATO warplanes have electronic evasion systems and can fly above the range of the portable missiles, but most civilian aircraft do not, and are vulnerable to attack. Nearly a dozen cargo and passenger planes have been brought down in Africa and Asia in the past decade using the missiles.

Reports have surfaced in recent weeks from officials in Algeria and Chad, and recently in the Russian news media, saying that antiaircraft missiles and launchers looted from Libyan government caches were already in the hands of a North African terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. American officials have yet to confirm any of those reports.

The two groups hired by the State Department are the Mines Advisory Group of Britain and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action.

Officials with the groups said that almost all of the Libyan weapons depots they had surveyed in recent weeks showed clear signs of looting. Libyan opposition forces took anything they could use from the depots in the opening weeks of the conflict, they said, and there were few surviving inventory records, making it impossible to account for the depots’ contents or say what was missing.

“The ammo dumps we’ve seen are either partially destroyed or picked clean,” said Alexander Griffiths, director of operations for the Swiss group, which now has 35 disposal experts working in rebel territory under a $470,000 American grant. “We haven’t seen Manpads so far, and my guess is we won’t see many, because they’re such a high-value item. They would be the first items to go.”

The British mine disposal group located and destroyed two of the portable missile systems last week near Ajdabiya in rebel-held northeastern Libya, according to Kate Wiggans, a spokeswoman. Two other stray antiaircraft missiles were found in May and destroyed, she said. All four were SA-7s — Russian-made portable missiles that date from the 1970s. Experts say that many of the Libyan Manpads were probably of similar vintage, and that some may be too decayed to use.

The Mines Advisory Group has three workers in Libya but plans to expand to at least 20, operating with $486,000 from the State Department and $290,000 in British government aid, Ms. Wiggans said.

View the original article here

U.S. Is Paying European Teams to Hunt Stray Munitions in Libya

The two groups hired by the State Department are the Mines Advisory Group of Britain and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action.

The Mines Advisory Group has three workers in Libya but plans to expand to at least 20, operating with $486,000 from the State Department and $290,000 in British government aid, Ms. Wiggans said.

View the original article here

In Libya, More Novice Soldiers in Defense of Qaddafi

Now Refat, who was not fully identified because of the fear of retribution from Libyan security forces, is patrolling the rebellious neighborhood of Souq al-Juma wearing a mismatched uniform, riding in a small white government car and worried for his life each night because of the growing number of rebel attacks within the capital on soldiers like him.

Just last Thursday, he said, four armed rebels ambushed a group of his fellow soldiers at a checkpoint, killing another amateur soldier named Walid, a 20-year-old student, and leaving another in the hospital.

“We are afraid,” Refat said. “We are standing under the light and they come from the darkness.”

Novice soldiers like Refat, whose account provided the first confirmation of widespread rebel reports of their nocturnal guerrilla attacks, appear to be an increasingly important part of the Qaddafi government’s defense against potential insurrection in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The professional soldiers of the Qaddafi militias who once cruised the streets of neighborhoods like Souq al-Juma in their white Toyota pickup trucks, he said, have all been called away to fight on the front lines near Misurata, the Nafusa Mountains or the eastern oil city of Brega.

As anxiety hung over the capital Friday on the four-month anniversary of the start of the Libyan uprising, Refat was patrolling the streets with another amateur soldier, a petroleum engineer in civilian life, under the supervision of an older, nonuniformed leader who made his living as a teacher.

“No one has a gun or a Kalashnikov,” Refat said, to prove the degree of calm in the neighborhood as he gave a tour to a pair of foreign journalists picked up for roaming the city without an official minder.

With rumors of a planned rebel attack or demonstration, though, security was tight. Foreign journalists were almost completely barred from leaving their hotel until after 4:30 p.m., and two who did slip out briefly in the morning reported seeing truckloads of riot police officers. To counter any potential opposition, the government organized a rally by thousands of Qaddafi supporters for much of the day in the city’s central Green Square — the largest such demonstration here in several weeks.

Loudspeakers and state television broadcast a defiant recorded message from Colonel Qaddafi. “NATO will be defeated,” he predicted, calling the rebels challenging his rule “sons of dogs.” (On Thursday, he delivered a radio address in the city of Bani Walid, urging residents to march together against the rebels based in Misurata.)

A few hours earlier, NATO jets had again buzzed the city and dropped bombs in broad daylight, increasing the tension. One large explosion south of the city sent a thick cloud of black smoke snaking over the skyline.

About 100 miles to the east, Qaddafi forces remained locked in battle with rebels attempting to advance from Misurata toward the barracks town of Zlitan. The Associated Press reported that rebel fighters and a woman living nearby had been killed when the Qaddafi forces fired Grad rockets and artillery at the rebels’ front lines.

In Tripoli, the streets of Souq al-Juma were full of what appeared to be plainclothes police officers and security agents — several ultimately came forward to confer with the soldiers — and some residents said they were afraid to be seen talking to reporters.

For a while, a group of young men smoking shisha pipes under a tree at a roadside cafe whispered of their nightly battles with Qaddafi forces, their gratitude for the NATO bombing and their hopes that rebel fighters would eventually reach the capital. When a reporter mimicked a popular Qaddafi slogan, a young man replied with a stony look, saying, “Don’t say that here! You are in Souq al-Juma!” And he insisted that even beyond the neighborhood, “90 percent” of Tripoli residents want Colonel Qaddafi to go.

Then another group of men pulled up chairs. The first group turned anxious and silent. And then the newcomers explained that all of Souq al-Juma, like all of Tripoli, supported Colonel Qaddafi.

A few blocks away, two young men in plainclothes, who had been sitting by a wall, stood up to introduce themselves as deputy police officers. Then they summoned the soldiers to escort the journalists away.

Touring the neighborhood, Refat noted the hollow shell of the police stations that rebels had burned down during the initial uprising four months ago. And he pointed out where each night the rebels had painted anti-Qaddafi graffiti on the walls of schools, mosques and other buildings, forcing Refat and his fellow soldiers to cover it up with pro-Qaddafi graffiti the next morning. As a civilian, he said, he had been “addicted to the Internet,” and he missed it badly since the Qaddafi government had shut it down (with the exception of the hotel housing foreign journalists) at the start of the uprising. Still, he said, he understood the reasons, “because people were putting up bad things about Libya, like ‘Qaddafi kills people,’ and, on the other side, to cut the communication between these people.”

By nightfall, the rumored rebel attack in the capital had failed to materialize. Some said they still expected local rebels to mark the day with some actions after the final evening prayer, at 10 p.m. But by then, the foreign journalists were sealed in their hotel, its phone lines were down and the Internet was no longer working there either.

View the original article here

2011年5月22日星期日

At War: South Africa Assails Libya Over Photographer's Death

The colleagues and friends of Sultan Munadi, who was slain during a rescue operation in Afghanistan, would like to thank readers for the many generous donations they made to help his family. Sultan’s family is extraordinarily grateful to them as well.

Sultan’s family currently has the funds they need to cover their basic living costs. As a result, Sultan’s friends and colleagues have decided to use the reader donations to create a fund to educate his children. Sultan passionately believed that education was the key to stabilizing Afghanistan. His friends and colleagues believe that educating Sultan’s children is the best way to honor his memory. Our goal is to raise enough funds to allow his children to receive the best education possible.

The education fund will include the donations readers have made since Sultan was killed in September 2009 and new contributions from Sultan’s friends and colleagues at The New York Times. If readers would like to contribute to the education fund, details are below. We thank readers again for the donations they have already made.

If you would like to donate by a wire transfer (recommended outside U.S.), instructions are here.

If you would like to contribute via mail, please send your check to:

Foreign Desk / The New York Times, Attn: Cynthia Latimer
620 Eighth Avenue, 3rd Fl.
New York, NY 10018
Checks should be made payable to “The New York Times,” noting “Munadi Education Fund” in the memo field.

View the original article here

2011年5月16日星期一

As Libya Buries Victims, Hints of Deception

Then, in minutes, the few hundred mourners who had gathered in this city melted away into a perfect spring day, ending another funeral — this time for the victims of a Friday bombing in the eastern oil town of Brega — that had been transformed into a pageant for denouncing the NATO forces whose bombs are taking a regular toll in Libyan lives.

For the officials who shepherd the small band of foreign journalists covering the war from here to such events, seeing them as powerful propaganda tools to be used against the Western powers, the burials on Saturday provided a moment that even the most accomplished propagandists could not have written into their script.

Just before the coffins arrived, two high-flying aircraft — NATO planes, for sure, since others are banned under a United Nations-imposed no-fly zone — wrote vapor trails high above.

As one aircraft circled back to the northeast, another flew on to the southwest, toward the western mountains along the Tunisian and Algerian borders where there has been intense fighting between Libyan rebels and the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. At the sight of each aircraft, mourners pointed in agitation to the sky, demanding that foreign TV crews capture the moment and shouting choruses of support for Colonel Qaddafi.

The moment captured the anger and futility felt by Libyans still loyal to Colonel Qaddafi as NATO aircraft pound targets in Tripoli and other government-held areas night after night, day after day, with the total of sorties flown since the air raids began now cresting 2,500.

Western defense officials have said that 40 to 50 percent of the Qaddafi forces’ striking power has been degraded, and with it almost all the capability, in fighter aircraft, missiles and antiaircraft batteries, that Libya had to confront an aerial invader. So far, only one NATO plane has crashed, and that was early in the conflict, after what NATO officials said was a technical failure.

If the funeral on Saturday was planned as a moment to strike a moral blow against the West, it was only modestly successful. Other messages pressed in.

The cemetery chosen for the burials was not one of the city’s most prestigious, but one set on a windblown stretch of shoreline across from a bleak highway overpass. A mile or two to the west, the idle cranes of the Tripoli port and the anchored ships stood like sentinels, testament to an oil-based economy that has been paralyzed by the war.

The 10-minute bus ride from the journalists’ hotel passed by several of the long lines for fuel that are a telltale feature wherever the government still holds sway. Dwarfing the lines in Baghdad in the final months of Saddam Hussein’s rule, the ones here run for miles, often four lines abreast, sometimes with more than one snaking corridor of vehicles approaching a single gas station. The waits can last days, a week even, and they have added to an air of demoralization that weighs even on officials appointed to mind foreign reporters.

Against this background, the funeral promised a powerful counterpoint, one with the potential to rally faint hearts. On Friday, officials gathered reporters at a Tripoli mosque to announce that 11 Muslim clerics had been killed in a NATO strike at Brega, 500 miles east of Tripoli, and the government’s easternmost point of control. The officials said 45 others had been wounded in the bombing of a former oil company guesthouse, and gave the platform to a cleric who called for the dead to be avenged in terrorist attacks against the West.

Earlier in the week, the propaganda apparatus had been focused on a gathering of tribal leaders in support of Colonel Qaddafi. Now, the deaths of the imams appeared to lay the ground for marshaling an even wider body of opinion. Calling the NATO attackers “crusaders” set the tone, as did the assertion, common in all the bombings, that NATO was lying when it identified the Brega target as a “command-and-control” center for pro-Qaddafi forces.

But the funeral itself seemed strangely flat, at least in political terms. For one thing, despite the location being broadcast on Libyan state television, and circulated in cellphone text messages, barely 500 people showed up, in a city of two million. No important government officials attended. For all the browbeating directed at foreign reporters by mourners who vowed their love for Colonel Qaddafi and their hatred for NATO, the event, taken as a whole, seemed underwhelming.

Part of the problem lay in the contradictions and uncertainties that flowed from official accounts, and those given by the mourners.

According to officials, the nine coffins, with bodies wrapped in the green of Islam, were those of the dead Muslim clerics. But some mourners offered differing counts. Two men whispered that their uncles, among those being buried, were soldiers, and one of those said the man concerned had been dead for weeks. Another identified one of the dead as a driver.

There was a man who said that he was in the guesthouse when it was attacked, and that 7 of the group of 16 he had led to the Brega gathering from Sirte, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, had been killed, 4 of them imams. The man, who identified himself as Attiya Ali Ahmed, 25, appeared to have suffered no injury in the attack. He said that the gathering had been called for a public reading of the Koran and to rally morale in Brega against the rebels, and that he had seen no sign of any military activity in or near the guesthouse. And he warned reporters to accurately convey his account.

“The Koran does not permit anything but the truth,” he said.

2011年5月8日星期日

Libya Strikes Fuel Supply in City Held by Rebels

The barrage struck shortly after midnight, when rockets began landing and exploding in several areas of the terminal, officials there said.

At least one rocket hit a set of three mammoth tanks, which ruptured and burst into a fireball. The fire settled into a leaping blaze that towered overheard, visible for miles. Its glow illuminated the eastern section of the city throughout the night. Residents woke to a thick, drifting cloud of black smoke.

The attack on the terminal was another escalation against the besieged city, and the second pinpoint attack by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in two nights.

Residents woke Friday to the news that Misurata’s port, its only lifeline to the outside world, had been peppered with antitank land mines.

At the fuel terminal, a small contingent of firefighters worked throughout the night and the day trying to contain the fire, which had destroyed all three storage tanks in one section of the terminal, but had not spread.

“We want to protect the other tanks from exploding,” said Mufta Youssef, one of the firefighters, after backing away from the containers’ blackened remains for a break from the heat.

No one was wounded in the attack or the firefighting effort, officials said.

The tanks contained diesel fuel and gasoline — each roughly 6,000 cubic meters, or 1.5 million gallons — said Muftah Bazina, the terminal’s director.

The effect on the city’s energy supply was not immediately apparent. Misurata has been cut off from new sources of fuel since the uprising against the Qaddafi government began in February. But it began the siege with large reservoirs of diesel fuel and gasoline, and so far there have not been shortages.

Several other fuel tanks remained intact, and terminal officials said the rebels’ de facto government would not disclose which tanks were full and which were not, nor would they make any public statements about how much fuel remained in the city.

“The exact information is a secret,” Mr. Bazina said.

He was willing to characterize the situation only in general terms. “We do have fuel,” he said. “But we do not have enough.”

For weeks, the lines at the few gas stations in the city have often stretched to hundreds of cars. But residents and officials have said the lines are caused in part by the small number of stations, which are often closed — not to any shortage of gasoline. Gas prices have remained low, indicating sufficient supply.

Supplies of pressurized cooking fuel, however, recently ran out.

The Qaddafi government has tried striking the terminal with rocket barrages at least three times in the past three weeks, officials said, and in previous attacks had destroyed an administrative building and a warehouse. The attack early Saturday was the first time a fuel storage tank had been hit.

Mr. Bazina and other officials at the port said at least one of the tanks was struck by at least one rocket, and the resulting explosion and heat ignited the others.

The impact craters and twisted remains of other ground-to-ground rockets were visible around the remaining tanks.

The tail section of one variant of a Grad rocket — a cold war-era munitions made in the 1980s in what is now Slovakia, and one of the most common fired on this city — was visibly stuck in the soil near the fire.

Workers at the terminal had also collected two others of the same variant of rocket, including one that had sailed just over another tank and struck the ground beside it without exploding.

View the original article here

2011年5月1日星期日

Op-Ed Columnist: My Libya, Your Libya, Our Libya

I descended 55 steps into the labyrinth of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s mind. The glow of cellphones and a feeble flashlight lit a passage into the darkness. A netherworld unfolded — bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, even saunas — linked by tunnels with six-inch-thick metal doors agape at their mouths. No expense had been spared on this lair.

“You see what the rat planned,” said Farage Mohamed, a manager in an oil pipe company, as he led the way to the base of an escape hatch that emerged deep in the gardens of this sprawling former Qaddafi villa in liberated eastern Libya. “It’s like Hitler’s Berlin bunker.”

So Qaddafi always thought this could happen, even 42 years into his rule. He feared someone might slice away the myths — Arab nationalist, African unifier, all-powerful non-president — and leave him, disrobed, a little man in a vast vault with nowhere left to go. In the twisted mind of the despot now derided here as “the man with the big hair,” his own demise was the tousle-coiffed specter that would not go away.

Strange, then, that the United States and Europe never thought this could happen — not to Qaddafi, or Mubarak, or Ben Ali, or any of the other murderous plunderers, some now gone, others slaughtering their own people, here in Libya, or in Syria, or Yemen. Policy was based on the mistaken belief that these leaders would last forever.

They were paranoid about their fates. We were convinced of their permanence.

Of course it was not just a conviction about their inevitability that drove U.S. policy toward these dictators. It was a cynical decision to place counterterrorism and security at the top of the agenda and human rights — in this case Arab rights — at the bottom. It was about Big Oil interests. And, to some degree, it was about the perception of what served the security of America’s closest regional ally, Israel.

Oh, sure, an Egyptian human rights activist might get American support, or a worthy nongovernmental organization, but when they were suppressed a resounding silence emanated from Washington.

Arab reform was an oxymoron, as was Arab democratization. They were dwarfed by the supposed counterterrorist credentials of these despots, their professed loathing for Al Qaeda or Hamas or any brand of radical Islamist, and their readiness to kill or torture and pass on intelligence. Qaddafi never stopped haranguing U.S. diplomats about his hatred for Al Qaeda and about American support for Al Qaeda’s first home, Saudi Arabia.

Yet he, like the other dictators, was also busy creating the problem in order to portray himself as the solution to it.

Passports got into the hands of the Libyans who made their way from the eastern town of Darnah to swell the ranks of Qaeda offshoots in Iraq. Repression fed extremism. Plundering fed desperation.

Hosni Mubarak used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a manipulative tool in his repressive arsenal. He was the worst “friend” the Palestinians ever had, sowing division as he preached unity. Like Qaddafi and Ben Ali, he called himself a bulwark against extremism even as his strangled society fostered it.

So, having been in Tunisia and Egypt and now Libya during this Arab Spring, I say, Shine a light — into Qaddafi’s bunkers and everywhere. Let people out of their dark houses. Allow them to participate in the making of their societies.

Take the disgruntled and give them opportunities. That’s a different counterterrorism policy that may actually work over time. The evolving Middle East, where despotic Islamism is well past its ideological zenith, demands it.

Before visiting Qaddafi’s villa, where kids play soccer on the former tennis court, I went to the Bayda home of Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the mild leader of the Transitional National Council in eastern Libya. “The West’s mistake was to support Qaddafi, the first terrorist,” he said, citing the downed Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 flights, with a combined total of 440 people killed.

He called for weapons, especially in the embattled west of the country, the intensification of NATO airstrikes, and the ousting of a man “who is challenging the whole world.”

There’s a debt to repay to the Libyan people; a strong strategic interest in a Tunis-Tripoli-Cairo democratic example; and, with civilians dying daily in Misurata, a powerful U.N.-backed legal case for bombing that forces the issue: Qaddafi’s departure. Behind the swagger lurks the coward who built that bunker.

It’s a few miles from the Qaddafi villa to the breathtaking ruins at Cyrene, founded in the seventh century B.C. and once known as the “Athens of Africa.” I wandered, almost alone, among the Greek and Roman temples and gazed out to the Mediterranean. Libya, brutalized, is reclaiming something deep, its history and culture.

Under the pines I found a few youths with a guitar, two of whom had lost brothers in this war. With a haunting intensity they sang: “We’re gonna chase him out of here because we have no fears. My Libya, your Libya, it’s our Libya. ...”?

2011年4月28日星期四

Rebels Repel Assaults By Loyalists in Libya

The fighting — with rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire — was at times pitched, but Colonel Qaddafi’s forces did not break through the lines held by the rebels, who celebrated their successful defense in the evening, driving through the village and firing rifles into the air.

The bodies of at least five pro-Qaddafi soldiers were hauled away by the rebels, along with others who were wounded, including Mahmoud Ben Aros, 27.

Mr. Aros, who said he was from Ziltan, a city to Misurata’s west, had been shot through the left femur. He writhed on a gurney as doctors tried to stop his bleeding and set the bone, and he was soon whisked away, to an uncertain fate.

“We will treat him; he needs surgery,” said Dr. Mohammed Muftah Alajnaf, at the small clinic here.

On the western border with Tunisia, rebels and loyalists fought all day Thursday for control of a strategic crossing that the rebels seized in a surprise move last week. After a seesaw battle, the rebels retained control late in the day, said a rebel spokesman, who also confirmed reports that ordnance fired by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had landed in Tunisian territory, prompting a protest by the Tunisian authorities.

The fighting turned after the arrival of reinforcements from the Nafusah mountain range, said the rebel spokesman, Mazigh Abouzakhar, speaking by telephone from the nearby town of Jadu. It remained unclear what had become of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces there, Mr. Abouzakhar said, but rebel fighters had captured at least one armored vehicle.

Rebels in the region, now calling themselves the United Forces of the Mountains of Nafusah, control the cities of Nalut, Jadu and Zintan, Mr. Abouzakhar said. But Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have surrounded the cities of Yafran, Gala’a and Kiklah and begun advancing on them, with ground forces and tanks surrounding the hospital at the edge of Yafran.

As the rebel fighters there and in Misurata made gains against government troops, rebel leaders in Benghazi said on Thursday that they had lost the isolated town of Kufrah, in southeastern Libya about 280 miles from the border with Chad, after it was overrun by Qaddafi loyalists who advanced in dozens of cars on Thursday morning. The rebels played down the loss, saying the town had switched hands several times since the uprising.

“It was quite a sizable force,” said Jalal al-Gallal, a rebel spokesman. “They’ve managed to hoist the green flag. We have sent reinforcements to claim it back,” Mr. Gallal said, adding, “It’s not the best of news.”

About 9 a.m. Thursday, the ferry Red Star 1, traveling from Misurata with hundreds of migrants along with dozens of people wounded in the fighting, docked in Benghazi after a 20-hour journey. Many of the more than 40 wounded people had been hit by shrapnel and bullets, according to Dr. Anas Toweir, the chief medical officer on board. He said the victims included a 9-year-old boy and a French photographer and blogger who was shot in the neck by a stray bullet from Misurata’s front lines.

In the port in Benghazi, more than 850 migrants, mostly from Niger, hauled blankets, bundles and suitcases onto buses that would take them to the Egyptian border, according to Roberto Pitea of the International Organization for Migration, which chartered the boat.

In Misurata in recent days, since the Qaddafi forces withdrew under pressure from the center of the city, the fighting has shifted to the outskirts and is now often waged on rolling and sometimes open terrain.

But as clashes between gunmen have moved out of the residential neighborhoods and into areas like the dunes and low-slung buildings of this city, Misurata has remained in suspense.

Loyalist forces, out of the range of most rebel weapons, have been firing ground-to-ground rockets and mortar rounds into the city, and have staged at least two ground attacks against Misurata’s flanks, threatening to re-enter the city or cut off its supplies.

An attack from the east toward the city’s harbor was thwarted by NATO airstrikes on Tuesday night. On Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were stopped by the rebels in a head-to-head fight. At least 13 rebels were wounded and 2 killed in the afternoon alone. The wounded included a local photographer whose forehead was grazed by shrapnel.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Tunis; Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

2011年4月27日星期三

NATO Says It Is Stepping Up Attacks on Libya Targets

White House officials said President Obama had been briefed on the more energetic bombing campaign, which included a strike early on Monday on Colonel Qaddafi’s residential compound in the heart of Tripoli, the capital.

United States officials said the effort was not intended to kill the Libyan leader, but to take the war to his doorstep, raising the price of his efforts to continue to hold on to power. “We want to make sure he knows there is a war going on, and it’s not just in Misurata,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity in discussing military planning.

The NATO campaign, some officials said, arose in part from an analysis of Colonel Qaddafi’s reaction to the bombing of Tripoli that was ordered by President Ronald Reagan a quarter-century ago. Alliance officials concluded that the best hope of dislodging the Libyan leader and forcing him to flee was to cut off his ability to command his most loyal troops.

“We don’t want to kill him or make a martyr out of him in the Arab world,” said a senior NATO diplomat familiar with the evolving strategy. “But if he sees the bombing happening all around him, we think it could change his calculus.”

American warplanes were not involved in the most recent strike on the Qaddafi residential complex, which also includes administrative offices and a military communications center, or in a separate raid on Monday that temporarily knocked Libyan state television off the air. The decision to let warplanes from other nations carry out the bulk of the attacks is in keeping with the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw to what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called “a support role” in the Libya air campaign.

But the attacks depend on intelligence reports and other military support from the United States, NATO officials said.

NATO officials acknowledged that the alliance’s intelligence was based on intercepted cellphone calls and radio dispatches that might indicate which barracks, buildings or compounds were serving as the government’s hidden command posts.

“If you know your main headquarters is going to be hit, you get out and set up an alternative in some nondescript barracks,” one NATO official said. Attacks on those hidden military posts are wholly legitimate, officials said — but there is always a chance that Colonel Qaddafi might be inside one of them.

Officials in Europe and Washington said the strikes were meant to reduce the Libyan government’s ability to harm civilians by eliminating, link by link, the command-and-communications and supply chains that are required for military operations.

But the attacks also reflect a broadening of alliance targets at a time when the rebels and the government have been consolidating their positions along more static front lines, raising concerns of a prolonged stalemate. Although it is too soon to see results from the recent shift, a NATO official said Tuesday that the alliance was closely watching early signs, like the recent reports of desertions from the Libyan Army.

NATO planes pounded targets east of the port city of Misurata on Tuesday, lifting mushroom-shaped clouds of dust hundreds of feet into the air. On the ground, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fired missiles and mortars in heavy, though intermittent, barrages on the rebels defending the port area, news agencies reported. Explosions echoed for miles across the water, and rescue ships bound for the port and its stranded migrant workers found themselves without a safe window to dock amid attacks by Colonel Qaddafi’s troops.

By sunset, a NATO warship could be seen patrolling the waters several miles off the coast. A Human Rights Watch representative with contacts in Misurata said one migrant worker was killed and 11 others wounded in shelling by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

The strike on Colonel Qaddafi’s palace and command center was denounced by Libyan officials as an assassination attempt, but alliance officers rejected that suggestion. Pentagon officials said the mission was against a legitimate military target and noted that it was carried out by F-16s from Norway.

But the view from the Kremlin was skeptical. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday delivered his most passionate critique of the Western intervention in Libya, underlining a rare open disagreement with his protégé, President Dmitri A. Medvedev.

At a news conference in Copenhagen, Mr. Putin was asked to elaborate on his comment that the United Nations resolution allowing airstrikes resembled “a medieval call for a crusade.” He responded by launching into an extended caustic attack on the NATO campaign, saying it violated the principle of sovereignty and the wishes of the Libyan people.

Military officials privately acknowledge that removing Colonel Qaddafi from power is the desired secondary effect of striking at state television and other symbols of his authoritarian rule. “His people may see the futility of continued resistance,” one Pentagon official said.

Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the NATO mission’s operational commander, told reporters on Tuesday at his headquarters in Italy that alliance intelligence officers were picking up reports of Libyan government soldiers who had abandoned their positions. “We are well aware of troops not reporting for duty,” he said.

Senior officers who served in NATO’s previous air war, fought in 1999 to protect the population of Kosovo from Serbian forces, said the campaign over Libya drew on lessons learned then.

Gen. John P. Jumper, who commanded United States Air Force units in Europe during the Kosovo campaign, recalled that allied “air power was getting its paper graded on the number of tanks killed” — even though taking out armored vehicles one by one was never going to halt “ethnic cleansing.”

So NATO began to hit high-profile institutional targets in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, instead of forces in the field. Although they were legitimate military targets, General Jumper said, destroying them also had the effect of undermining popular support for the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

“It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in Belgrade, and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade, that Milosevic’s own people began to turn on him,” General Jumper said.

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from the Mediterranean Sea.

2011年4月23日星期六

Libya Could Become Stalemate, Top U.S. Military Officer Says

The officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a month of airstrikes had destroyed 30 percent to 40 percent of the capabilities of the military forces loyal to Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but had not yet drastically tilted the conflict with opposition militias one way or another. He cited shifts in tactics by Libyan forces that made it difficult for NATO warplanes to distinguish them from the rebel fighters and civilians.

“So it’s become a much more difficult fight, much more difficult targets,” Admiral Mullen said in Baghdad, where he visited American troops involved in another American war. “As I have observed in recent days, essentially it’s very much stalemate-like in the vicinity of Ajdabiya and Brega,” two contested cities east of the capital, Tripoli.

His remarks were echoed by those of the most prominent American yet to visit the rebel strongholds in Libya: Senator John McCain. Appearing on Friday in Benghazi, he, too, used the word stalemate as he called on the United States to intensify its attacks on pro-Qaddafi forces, using aircraft like A-10 jets and AC-130 gunships that the White House and Pentagon have pulled from the fight, citing the threat from portable missiles on the ground and saying allied warplanes should take the lead.

Mr. McCain, a strong advocate of intervention in Libya, called for the United States to recognize the rebels’ governing council as the country’s legitimate government, as France, Italy and Qatar have done, and provide it with money and arms on a scale similar to what the United States did in support of those who fought the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“I have met these brave fighters, and they are not Al Qaeda,” said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. “They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation.” His comments came after a brief visit that included meetings with the members of the Transitional National Council, led by a former justice minister, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, and a former interior minister, Abdul Fateh Younes, who both defected when the uprising began in February.

Mr. McCain’s visit, though coordinated with the White House and the State Department, nonetheless underscored a mounting sense of frustration among critics and even some supporters of the Obama administration that it was not acting aggressively enough to help the rebels overthrow Colonel Qaddafi.

Although this week President Obama authorized the use of armed drones in Libya and a $25 million contribution of nonlethal military surplus for the rebel forces, the administration resists deepening the American military involvement. Asked on Thursday whether American soldiers or advisers should be sent to help improve the effectiveness of the rebel forces, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Mr. Obama had explicitly ruled that out. “And there is no wiggle room in that,” he said.

Instead, administration officials have pleaded for patience. They said that while it could take weeks or months for the rebels to mature as fighters, they asserted that the operation continued to weaken Colonel Qaddafi’s military and that sanctions and an arms embargo allowed the United States “quite aggressively, both unilaterally and multilaterally, to put the squeeze on Qaddafi,” as the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, put it on Friday.

“I think it’s important to remember that Qaddafi’s resources are limited,” Mr. Carney told reporters returning with the president to Washington from California. “And the arms embargo and the sanctions that have been put in place will, as each day goes by, make it harder and harder for him to function and for his regime to function.”

Military officials said the greatest shortcoming among the ragtag rebel militias was not weapons but training, communications systems and a sensible command structure. The supplies the United States is sending — including uniforms, body armor and nonclassified communications gear — are suited to building a more effective fighting force. With the anticipated arrival in Libya of liaison officers from France, Italy and Britain, officials expressed hope that the rebels would become better organized and coordinate their battlefield movements more effectively.

Even so, Admiral Mullen and other NATO officials acknowledged that an evolving tactic adopted by pro-Qaddafi forces — hiding among the population and moving about the battlefield in civilian vehicles — had vastly complicated NATO’s attempts to locate, identify and attack government troops, armor and artillery.

The use of armed Predator drones is intended to counter that. Those drones, though, will operate only on the frontlines separating the rebels and the government forces, with the justification of protecting civilians in besieged cities like Misurata. As of late Friday, no Predators had yet attacked Libyan government forces, officials said.

A senior administration official acknowledged that the fierce fighting in Misurata in particular called into question whether the NATO campaign was succeeding in protecting civilians. “There are constraints on doing that because of the stated desire to avoid civilian casualties, the technical limits of air power and even the weather,” the official said.

Overall, though, the NATO campaign was never intended, by itself, to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi. The measure of success, the official added, is “not whether the rebels are marching on Tripoli.”

The fighting in Misurata seesawed Friday.

The rebels there said they had driven Colonel Qaddafi’s men from buildings along Tripoli Avenue, a central artery, where snipers had been shooting at anyone who dared venture out. Shooting resumed later, though, near the main hospital, not far from Tripoli Avenue, according to a foreign journalist at the hospital, suggesting that whatever success the rebels had enjoyed was probably short-lived. The Libyan flag, which had been taken down the day before, was once again flying over the city’s tallest building.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said the army might stop fighting in Misurata because of NATO airstrikes, Reuters reported. Instead, he said, local tribes will try to negotiate with the rebels, and if that fails, the tribes will fight the rebels, the news agency reported.

In Benghazi, the rebels seemed buoyed by the news from the front and from Mr. McCain’s visit. He stopped briefly at the courthouse that has been the headquarters of the uprising’s leaders. Only a few dozen Libyans were there, and they chanted pro-American and anti-Qaddafi slogans.

“This,” Mr. McCain said, “was one of the most exciting and inspiring days of my life.”

Rod Nordland reported from Benghazi, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Reporting was contributed by C. J. Chivers from Benghazi, Michael S. Schmidt from Baghdad, Thom Shanker from Washington, Alan Cowell from London and J. David Goodman from New York.

2011年4月20日星期三

France Joins Britain in Sending Military Advisers to Libya Rebels, Reports Say

PARIS — The French government said Wednesday it would join Britain in sending a small number of military liaison officers to support the ragtag rebel army in Libya, news reports said, offering a diplomatic boost for the insurgent leader Mustafa Abdel-Jalil who planned to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.

The French and British decisions to send advisers marked the latest development in the international community’s search for a means to break a bloody battlefield deadlock that has killed hundreds in the contested cities of Misurata and Ajdabiya and left the rebels in tenuous control of a few major coastal cities in their campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi

But the moves, likened by some critics to America’s decision to send military advisers to Vietnam, raised worries in both countries that their military establishments were being drawn closer into the conflict. The French government spokesman, Fran?ois Baroin, told reporters on Wednesday that the number of military liaison officers would be small, but did not give details. French government ministers stressed that they do not plan to send ground troops to support the rebels.

William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that the British advisers would help the makeshift rebel forces “improve their military organizational structures, communications and logistics.”

Britain and France — the European nations at the forefront of the diplomatic drive against Colonel Qaddafi — have strived to maintain a united front since they promoted a United Nations Security Council resolution almost five weeks ago authorizing NATO air strikes to protect civilians from loyalist forces.

France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that he remained “absolutely opposed to a deployment of troops on the ground, “ words echoed on Wednesday by the defense minister, Gérard Longuet, who said the Security Council resolution permitting air strikes did not authorize the use of foreign ground forces.

On Wednesday, nonetheless, the satirical and investigative French weekly, Canard Encha?né, reported that, along with Britain and the United States, France dispatched covert special forces to Libya three weeks to assess the impact of allied airstrikes.

The Libyan government criticized the British decision to send advisers , saying the move would prolong conflict. Instead, Libya’s foreign minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, used a BBC interview broadcast on Wednesday to renew the Tripoli authorities’ frequent call for a cease-fire and a suspension of NATO bombing to permit a settlement negotiated by Libyans themselves without foreign interference.

“We think any military presence is a step backwards,” Mr. Obeidi said, “and we are sure that if this bombing stopped and there is a real cease-fire we could have a dialogue among all Libyans about what they want — democracy, political reform, constitution, election. This could not be done with what is going on now.”

President Sarkozy of France met Mr. Abdel-Jalil, formerly Colonel Qaddafi’s justice minister, to try to find a means to break the deadlock and, according to a statement from the French presidency, to debate “the process of democratic transition.

The French prime minister, Fran?ois Fillon, who also planned to meet Mr. Abdel-Jalil, was quoted in news reports as saying France would intensify air strikes “to prevent Qaddafi forces from pursuing their attacks on civilian populations.”

“But at the same time, we will need to find a political solution, that is, conditions for a dialogue so that the Libyan crisis can be resolved,” he said in Kiev, Ukraine, according to Agence France-Presse.

Libya’s state television reported on Wednesday that NATO warplanes had struck telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure. But it did not say where or when the reported attacks took place.

The Libyan rebel leader held talks on Tuesday in Rome with Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, and urged NATO to increase its airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. But, publicly at least, he appeared to have secured no firm commitment of increased military aid similar to Britain’s offer.

Italy, France and Qatar are the only countries to formally recognize the rebel administration in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Britain had previously been providing what Mr. Hague described as “nonlethal assistance,” in the form of telecommunications equipment and body armor. He maintained that the new deployment fell within the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the international community to protect Libyan civilians but ruling out an occupation force. The military team will work with British diplomats who are already in Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital, he said.

The officers will be deployed “quickly,” said Britain’s Defense Ministry, but it declined to provide further details on the timeline or the number of soldiers. The Associated Press reported that there could be as many as 20.

A government official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorized to discuss operational matters, said that though some of the soldiers had special forces backgrounds, they were not directly drawn from Britain’s elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service teams.

The move was cause for concern among some current and former politicians. Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, which is now part of a governing coalition with the Conservatives, said Tuesday that the advisers “must not be seen as a first installment of further military deployment.” He added, “Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers.”

Current members of Parliament have also called for a fresh debate. “This is clear evidence of mission creep,” said John Baron, a Conservative member. “Now we are beginning to put military personnel on the ground, something that wasn’t even discussed when we debated this issue.”

Allied bombing sorties and Tomahawk missiles have failed to tip the balance decisively in favor of a rebel group with disjointed leadership, limited weapons and many inexperienced fighters. And civilian casualties have continued to mount. On Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 20 children had been killed in the siege of Misurata.

Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and Ravi Somaiya from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

2011年4月19日星期二

Letter from Europe: Libya Crisis Reveals Splits on E.U. Goals

BERLIN — The Libyan war is not good news for NATO. In spite of the upbeat speeches by NATO foreign ministers last week in Berlin, only 14 of the 28 member countries militarily support the no-flight zone and actions to protect Libyan civilians from attack by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces. Only six of them are carrying out airstrikes.

With support from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, the NATO mission in Libya is now a coalition of the willing, which analysts say undermines the cohesion of the alliance. But compared with other missions undertaken by NATO, the alliance this time moved with unprecedented speed in beginning the operation.

The Libya crisis is even worse news for Europe and its military ambitions. It shows more clearly than ever how most E.U. countries are unwilling to match their defense ambitions with any broad strategic goals.

“The decision by many European countries not to contribute to the NATO mission bodes ill for Europe’s foreign and security policy,” said Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe, the European center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Particularly damaging for Europe was Germany’s decision to abstain in the U.N. vote that authorized the no-flight zone over Libya. That was a huge disappointment to the United States and particularly to Britain and France. “Germany positioned itself outside the Western consensus,” Mr. Techau added. In doing so, he said, Berlin was undermining attempts by Europe to become a convincing defense player.

Britain and France had lobbied the U.N. Security Council to authorize the no-flight zone. Once authorized, with the United States, Canada and Denmark, they began the airstrikes.

Then came the crunch. The Obama administration did not want to continue leading the mission. It has enough on its plate with Afghanistan. Besides, Libya is considered Europe’s backyard. So for the first time ever, the United States asked NATO’s European allies to take over the command and control of the mission.

At first, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, balked at giving NATO that role, hoping that France could take the lead. But eventually he had to realize that Europe was not going to become a defense player in its own right with France at the helm.

“Libya confirmed France’s worst beliefs,” said Clara Marina O’Donnell, a defense expert at the Center for European Reform, a research organization in London. “It could not rely on its E.U. partners.”

It was a blow to France’s ambitions. “France’s goal of leading Europe in defense matters is receding,” said Bastien Irondelle, security expert at Sciences Po, the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris. “For his military aims, Sarkozy will now have to go outside the E.U. That means coalitions of the willing.”

It is not for want of trying by France, and Britain, to shift Europe from its preference for being a “soft power” — providing humanitarian aid and building civilian structures — to becoming a “hard power” with military force as an option.

They knew as much during the 1990s when the European Union, with its diplomacy ridiculed, had no idea about how to stop the war in the former Yugoslavia. It had to rely on the United States and NATO to end the fighting. Europe’s paralysis prompted Britain and France in 1998 to launch the Union’s European Security and Defense Policy.

Britain, then under Prime Minister Tony Blair, believed a stronger Europe was vital for the trans-Atlantic relationship, because most E.U. missions would depend on NATO’s military assets. The Union, therefore, would not become a competitor to or grow independent of NATO.

France, then led by President Jacques Chirac, thought differently. “It always wanted Europe to become a strong defense player, a European power,” said Mr. Irondelle.

Despite the ideological differences, London and Paris worked together. In 1999, they pushed the Union to agree that by 2003, the bloc should have the ability to deploy a force of 60,000 troops within 60 days and sustain it for a year. It never happened.

London and Paris in 2003 then came up with the idea of E.U. battle groups, or expeditionary forces. These units would consist of 1,500 soldiers each and be deployed within five to 10 days. These units have still to be tested.

With prodding from London and Paris, the Union managed in 2003 to agree on a European security strategy designed to foster a global strategic culture among European countries. The reactions by the Union to the changes sweeping across the Middle East showed how the Union was out of its depth.

The Union’s shortfalls in defense, including expenditure and military capabilities, persuaded Britain and France to forge last year a far-reaching agreement in defense cooperation. It included sharing aircraft carriers and collaborative research for both countries’ nuclear deterrent systems.

“The Anglo-French accord confirmed the frustration in London and Paris over E.U. defense efforts,” Ms. O’Donnell said. She added that European defense could become even weaker as long as these two countries continue to cooperate so closely.

Yet opinion polls across Europe show that citizens want the Union to have a stronger defense and security policy to underpin the bloc’s support for human rights. But paradoxically, polls also show that the public is unwilling to support military action or fund any increase in defense spending to defend the bloc’s values.

The main reason for this discrepancy is that Europe, as a bloc, does not have a strategic culture. “Only Britain and France have a strategic culture and natural outward approach,” said Mr. Techau, from Carnegie Europe.

That could change — if Germany changed.

“Germany could lead others if it adopted a more open approach to foreign policy. But Germany has neither the muscle nor the strategic scope to think in global terms, unlike Britain and France,” Mr. Techau said.

Indeed, Chancellor Angela Merkel shows no inclination to take any lead in shaping Europe’s defense, or, for that matter, foreign policy. Therefore, say analysts, the United States, Britain and France will continue as they did during the Libya crisis, forging coalitions of the willing that will leave Europe and NATO weaker.

On Ship of Evacuees From Libya, Harrowing Tales

The rescued workers, ferried to safety in the rebel capital of Benghazi on a tourist vessel, carried with them little beyond harrowing accounts of their weeks in limbo beside a nearly abandoned port, and a collective sense of relief to be out of the war’s path.

The conditions they left behind were dire. Misurata, Libya’s third largest city, continued to be the scene of intensive, close-quarters fighting between forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and the city’s anti-Qaddafi rebels. It also faced barrages of mortar and rocket fire from Colonel Qaddafi’s troops.

As the fighting raged, as many as 5,000 migrant workers remained trapped within the city, according to Jeremy R. A. Haslam, the team leader for the International Organization for Migration, which chartered the vessel that entered the port for a second time to collect foreigners trying to flee.

The city also was at risk of losing more of its already limited medical support. Misurata, like much of Libya, has relied for years on foreign medical workers to help staff its hospitals. Much of that staff has already left. And foreign nurses aboard the vessel said that many more planned to go soon.

Prospects for further evacuations were unclear. Mr. Haslam said the crew of the Ionian Spirit, worried that Misurata was too dangerous, was threatening not to return for another evacuation. “They think they are pushing their luck with a third trip,” he said.

Compounding the unease was an evident sense of distrust between crew members and the cruise line operating the ship. “I am sure I do not want to go back,” said a crew member on the vessel. The crew member, who asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation, said that the crew had not been told they would travel to a war zone, and that many of the ship’s company remained on the vessel only because they were owed back pay.

“They told us we were going to Greece,” the crew member said. “Not here. They lied to us.”

All around the Ionian Spirit, the scenes of the evacuation were evident, as more than 650 young Ghanaian men slept on the decks of the vessels or slumped over the tables where tourists would ordinarily be enjoying their meals. Also on board were more than 100 Nigerians, 72 Libyans and smaller numbers of other nationalities.

They were an exhausted lot. Many had been sleeping in the open for weeks, and had waited, anxiety rising, for a berth on any of the few relief ships that have risked docking in Misurata.

Isaac Owuso, 33, a construction laborer, offered a mixture of gratitude that he had at last left the city with his deep disappointment at his recent fate. He had traveled from Ghana to Libya, he said, to work on the Qaddafi government’s construction projects and earn money for his wife and child.

When the war erupted, he had managed to save $2,000 euros and 100 Libyan dinars, which he kept hidden in his clothes. He tried to flee Misurata overland, he said, but robbed at a checkpoint. He said he did not know whether rebels or pro-Qaddafi gunmen manned the checkpoint. But he knew the result.

“Look at me,” he said, pulling a lone dinar note from his pocket. “This is my life. See me? I have only this money and nothing more. How will I take care of my family?”

The ship’s cabins, meanwhile, held many wounded Libyans evacuated from the siege, including four recent amputees. Some were anti-Qaddafi fighters suffering grievous wounds.

“Thank God for this ship,” said Mustafa Youssif, whose leg was amputated on Sunday after he was hit by shrapnel while riding in a pickup truck near Tripoli Street, one of Misurata’s fronts.

In other cabins were more victims: a 9-year-old boy struck in the teeth by shrapnel, and an anti-Qaddafi sniper shot through his mouth, a man peppered with shrapnel holes.

One deck also held several Filipino evacuees, including a group of teachers from Misurata University.

The teachers said they had come from the Philippines in December, and had not yet been paid their salary by the government when the war started. The university had closed, and since the bombardments of the city by the pro-Qaddafi forces, they had been surviving with help from Libyan neighbors.

“They gave us food,” said Zoe Contreras, 37, an English teacher. “Our neighbors were giving us water. They sometimes were knocking on our door and then just giving us food.”

Not all of the foreign workers in Misurata had been so fortunate, they said. A group of evacuating nurses said more than a dozen of their friends and colleagues in Misurata had been missing since mid-March, when the pro-Qaddafi forces occupied the neighborhood near their apartment building.

The missing, they said, included five Filipino and four Bangladeshi nurses, as well as an Egyptian nurse and her husband and three children. The account underscored that the toll of the fighting in Misurata, which rebels say has killed more than 1,000 people, is far from tallied, and that there are potentially many classes of victims whose fates remain unknown.

2011年4月18日星期一

In a Medical Tent in Libya, a Grim Procession

A Libyan and Italian medical team worked to save her. It was not certain they could. “Her brain is out,” said Dr. Abdullah Juwid, a surgeon.

As the ugly math of a midsize city suffering a siege would have it, Dr. Juwid was both a doctor in an overcrowded triage tent and an uncle of this wounded child. He had no time to dwell on her case.

A pickup truck skidded to a stop outside. Several rebel fighters carried their bullet-riddled friend through the entrance flap. The man appeared to have been in his 20s. He had been shot through both legs and squarely in his chest and mouth. His pupils were fixed.

“Maybe he is dead,” another doctor said, as their assistants cut away the man’s clothes. The assistants stopped. There was no point in searching for more wounds. “He is killed,” one of them said.

In the battle for Misurata, a rebel holdout city under attack by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces for months, the tally of those killed and wounded rises daily, and often by the hour. It can be only partially assessed at one of the several treatment centers scattered around the rebel-controlled portions of the city. But where it is counted, it is grim.

The wounded arrive at this triage tent throughout the day and sometimes deep into the night, a population formed by circumstance and number into a procession of wartime trauma.

Mustafa Madhoun, a physiotherapist who had never seen injuries nastier than those suffered by the victims of vehicle accidents, had just participated in the amputation of the lower left leg of a fighter, Mustafa Youssif.

Mr. Madhoun summed it up. “Yesterday was a very bad day,” he said. “I had hoped today would be different. Today is a very bad day, too.”

In clinical terms, this triage tent has seen a catalog of the effects of modern weapons on human life — gunshot wounds, blast wounds, shrapnel wounds, the occasional burns. People arrive with wounds as mild as a bullet’s graze, to wounds as life-changing as a severed spinal cord. A few arrive dead.

On average, 50 or 60 wounded people pass through this tent each day. About 10 of them die, according to the medical staff and the flow of patients observed.

“Most of them, for sure, are civilians,” said Dr. Paolo Grosso, an anesthesiologist who is part of a seven-member team in Misurata from Emergency, the Italian aid organization, and was among those working to save young Jinan. The organization has been helping Misurata’s doctors.

How many people have been fatally wounded since the siege began in February is not readily known. Rebels say more than 1,000 people have been killed. That number is not verifiable in the current conditions.

The hospital records available so far indicate that at a minimum 313 people have been killed and 1,047 wounded through Sunday evening. But this count is most likely low, as some families do not take victims who have been killed outright to hospitals. They simply bury them instead.

(Eight people who were killed in a rocket strike last Thursday, for example, were interred in a small public park in the Qasr Ahmed neighborhood without being tallied by any medical staff.)

Some days, like Saturday and Sunday, in which 70 people were verified wounded each day, have been worse than others.

Among those struck have been children, including Mohamed Hussein el-Faar, 10. He arrived at the triage tent Saturday afternoon, howling. Blood trickled from the hair beside his right ear. He fought the doctors as they tried to examine him, until several assistants held him down.

At first it seemed he had been grazed by a bullet. But there was also a wound on the opposite side of his head. After he was stabilized and moved into a facility with a CT scanner, the images provided a fuller view: a bullet had passed through Mohamed’s skull.

On Sunday he was still alive, though a doctor gave a discouraging prognosis. “Not good,” he said. “Never with this kind of injury is the prognosis good.”

By late Sunday morning in the triage tent, there was little time to think of yesterday’s patients. The sounds of battle could be heard a few blocks away, and thick smoke billowed over part of Tripoli Street, one of the city’s main fronts. A hurried pace had picked up again.

At 11:20 a.m. the medical staff cut away the shirt of a man who had been peppered by light debris in an explosive blast, his back busy with small holes. An ultrasound technician scanned his torso while doctors watched.

“No problem,” Dr. Grosso said. “His chest is free.”