Civilians fled Sirte on Friday as interim government forces pounded the coastal city in an effort to dislodge fighters loyal to ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi. The prolonged battle for Gaddafi’s hometown, besieged from three fronts, has raised mounting concern for civilians trapped inside the city of about 100,000 people, with each side accusing the other of endangering them. Cars streamed out of Sirte from the early hours. Shelling and tank fire continued from both sides on the eastern and western fronts, black smoke rose from the centre of town and NATO planes flew overhead.
“There are no shops for food, everything is closed,” a resident who gave his name only as Mohammed told Reuters on Friday. “There is no medicine, we have a shortage of everything.” Doctors at a field hospital near the eastern front line said an elderly woman died from malnutrition on Friday morning and they had seen other cases. Some families leaving from the west told Reuters they had not eaten for two days.
A man with a shrapnel wound to his left arm said the hospital in Sirte had no power and few supplies. A doctor had tried to patch up his wound by the light of a mobile phone.
“I was injured in my garden at one p.m. but I stayed home until the evening because of the heavy fire,” Mohammed Abudullah said at a field hospital outside the city. Gaddafi loyalists and some civilians blaming NATO air strikes and shelling by the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) for killing civilians.
NATO and the NTC deny that. They and some other civilians coming out of the town say pro-Gaddafi fighters are executing people they believe to be NTC sympathisers. “It is not the Gaddafi people and not you people,” one elderly man shouted, gesturing towards NTC fighters at a checkpoint as he left the city.
“It’s the French planes that are hitting us night and day. They knocked the roof off our house. Is this how we’re supposed to die?”
Ahmad Mohammed Yahya told Reuters street fighting was erupting in the town most nights and that pro-Gaddafi fighters were aggressively recruiting local people.
