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Summary: A shepherd's boy, aged just seven, recovers after being shot in the face by attackers who killed his twin brother.
[4 March 2011] - Even kneeling at the bedside with my ear to his lips, I could barely hear him whisper. Delicate features torn and swollen by the bullet fired into his face, seven-year-old Faraj was, in any case, too dazed by painkillers to describe what had happened. In the bed next to him his 13-year-old brother Hussein was tearful and quiet. He too had a bullet wound to the head. A third brother, Hussein’s twin, Hassan, had been with them when the shooting began. But the round which hit Hassan had taken off half his jaw before passing through his brain. Hassan was now lying in the mortuary. This is the story of the cold-blooded massacre of children, committed on Wednesday morning by fighters loyal to the Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. I heard it and saw the pitiful evidence in a small ward in Ajdabiya hospital. Nearby Gaddafi jets were engaged in a second day of strikes against the rebel forces which had repulsed an attempt by his own loyalists to seize back the neighbouring oil town of Al Brega. There is a real danger of Libya sliding towards civil war if Gaddafi continues to hang on. Over the past 24 hours Libyan has been fighting Libyan along this southeastern corner of the Gulf of Sirte. One of the dead was reportedly an Anglo-Libyan father of seven from Manchester called Khaled Attghdi. Gaddafi’s forces have now been pushed back to the town of Ras Lanuf, with rebel fighters, dizzied by their first battlefield success, promising an advance on Tripoli, 500 miles away. Daily Mail photographer Mark Richards and I were in Al Brega on Wednesday to witness the bitter fighting which followed a surprise attempt by Gaddafi forces on the town. Several hundred had arrived by road in the early hours and were engaged by increasing numbers of rebel troops as the day progressed. Although backed by jet fighters, which bombed positions around Al Brega, the Gaddafi forces were pushed out by nightfall. By yesterday morning the rebels had pursued them many miles down the coast road to where the Gulf of Sirte coast swings westwards in the direction of the capital. At Ajdabiya hospital, I was given the butcher’s bill for the previous day’s combat. According to staff, 11 rebel fighters and seven local civilians had been killed and 27 wounded, three so seriously that they had been transferred 100 miles to Benghazi. Two of the dead were staff at the Sirte Oil Company terminal, which appears to have been one of the main objectives for the Gaddafi forces who entered Al Brega. Local rebel fighters said they came from a unit under the command of Gaddafi’s son Khamis. What possessed them to attack Faraj and his brothers can only be speculated upon. But you only have to look into the seven-year-old’s face to see the truth behind Colonel Gaddafi’s often professed love of his people. This was what the despot will do to a population who have had enough of him. This is how he attempts to terrify them into new submission, while claiming to the world that Libya is at peace. The three brothers came from a poor farming family who eked out a living amid the desert scrub outside Al Brega. They are typical of the rural Libyans who survive on an average of $2 a day, while Saif Gaddafi entertains at his £10million home in London. On Wednesday morning Hussein, Hassan and Faraj were helping their father Omran herd the family’s flock of sheep and goats. A little before 8am they were out in the desert, near the campus of Al Brega’s oil engineering university, when a convoy of some 30 Toyota pick-ups appeared along the Tarmac road some 100 metres away from them. ‘There were a lot of soldiers in the vehicles,’ said Hussein. ‘They did not say anything, there was no warning. They stopped their cars and just began shooting at us.’ It is hard to excuse the fusillade, or fault its accuracy. The boys were close enough to the road to be identified as child goatherds. All three were hit in the head. Hassan died instantly, while Hussein’s forehead was creased by another shot. Yesterday all he would recall of the aftermath was seeing his twin brother lying bleeding ‘with his teeth smashed.’ Their father, the only adult, was unscathed. Because of the fighting which flared up around the university campus and continued for most of the day the boys did not receive any medical attention for hours after the attack. ‘Eventually they were patched up in Al Brega’s clinic and we only managed to get them here after nightfall,’ said a doctor in the hospital, which is 40 miles from the university. ‘We operated on Faraj at 8pm and this is what we took out of him.’ From his pocket he produced a plastic bottle containing an AK 47 bullet tip, flattened by the impact with Faraj’s bones. ‘He was a very lucky boy,’ the doctor told me. Faraj’s right eye was swollen, bruised and shut, as if he had been punched hard. But he should still have his sight. While I was talking to the doctor a thin little man of late middle age, wearing a traditional ‘dish dash’ gown and Arab headdress, came into the ward and sat quietly beside Faraj. It was the boys’ father, who had been making his son Hassan’s funeral arrangements. ‘These people knew what they were doing. It was no accident,’ he told me, his face still rigid with shock. Why do you think they did this to your sons, I asked him. Omran Hassan Ali paused and then whispered: ‘They are Gaddafi’s men and all they know is how to kill. They are not true Muslims, nor real Libyans who did this. ‘We were no threat to them. We were just looking after our animals. I will never forgive Gaddafi for what he has done.’ While we were in the hospital fresh firing began outside. Nurses rushed to balconies to look out and up for a new air raid. But it was only shooting in the air from a passing funeral procession for another of the previous day’s victims. It is hard to judge how well the rebels’ ragtag army would do against any well-equipped regime forces. Yesterday I watched a man trying to cock an aged assault rifle with his bare foot. Nearby young teenagers were taking turns to sit on and swivel the multi-barrelled anti-aircraft guns positioned south of Ajdabiya. There was an air of complacency rather than red alert. But while confidence grows, attitudes are hardening towards those who oppose the revolution. Last week the talk was of a bloodless uprising, justice being seen to be done and the full majesty of the law. Yesterday, perhaps because of the new bloodshed, I heard calls for summary execution of mercenaries and a willingness to fight Gaddafi’s loyalists to the bitter end. One man showed me a sergeant’s stripes he had removed from the sleeve of one of a handful of prisoners taken by the rebels during the Battle of Al Berga. ‘He was an old man and there was a young man with him who tried to jump out of the car and escape,’ said the fighter. ‘We shot him down.’ Another fighter told me that they would advance on Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town, some 200 miles to the west. ‘We will hold out our hands in friendship to them. But if they oppose us then we will fight hard.’ We shall see. What is certain is that more blood will be spilt before Gaddafi is forced out. Further Information:
Hussein told me in a hoarse whisper what he could remember of the events.
Owner: Richard Pendlebury and Mark Richardspdf: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362778/Gaddafis-thugs-kill-Liby...Association: The Daily Mail Online