Gaddafi

Return to Benghazi

Down the dusty, bumpy road from Tobruk, along which every few miles upended chairs and thick ropes strung across the pavement stand as mute checkpoints – many of them abandoned by their one-time rebel guards – lies Benghazi, the seat of the Libyan uprising, still brave, still mad, incredulous of the predictions of its own demise.

Nearly a month after the onset of foreign air strikes – and my first abrupt departure from free east Libya –the rebel stronghold still stands, logic be damned.

Week of horror in Ajdabiya's hospital

Walking through the corridors of the El-Mgareaf hospital, Dr Suleiman Refadi went from sadness, to boiling fury, to unhindered joy in the space of just half an hour.

The general surgeon had stayed holed up in the hospital in east Ajdabiya for the six days Gaddafi's forces spent in his city after retaking control last week. He and a number of his staff risked being shot by snipers in the city or being arrested and taken away like so many others during this time.

Three of his doctors had disappeared on their way to pick up injured civilians just two streets away from the hospital. Only their shot up ambulance was found.

The surgeon told me about the women he had treated who said they had been raped by government soldiers. One woman was snatched from outside her home as she called for her child to come indoors. Another was inside her own house near the west gate to the city when soldiers broke in and raped her.