Fearful of strikes by Gadafy, residents left town and doctors evacuated the hospital, writes MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Correspondent in Ras Lanuf, eastern Libya
THE STREETS of Ras Lanuf are deserted and silent except for the infrequent circling of rebel pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft guns mounted in the back.
Fighters have massed at the town gate, a huge green structure that arcs across the road, but Ras Lanuf is eerily quiet apart from the sound of nearby artillery fire.
“Most have fled. It is too dangerous to stay,” says Mohammed Ben Hamid, an engineer who works at the sprawling oil terminal around which Ras Lanuf, a town of 40,000 residents, sprang. “My family have already left and I will probably go today.”
Another man driving an empty bus says he is heading for Benghazi, the city further east which has acted as the cradle for the uprising that has shaken Muammer Gadafy’s 42-year rule to the core. “Everyone is afraid of what will come next,” he shouts through the window.
The few that remain in Ras Lanuf talk of Gadafy’s forces carrying out missile strikes that sparked an exodus soon after the rebels captured the town at the weekend. The attacks prompted the local hospital to evacuate all patients, most of whom had been wounded in the fighting, and transfer them to other rebel-held towns.
“We evacuated around 53 people, including seven that were so seriously injured they are not expected to survive,” says Dr Heitham Gheriani, who has worked in Ireland for 10 years. “The fear is that Gadafy will heavily target Ras Lanuf from the air . . . We had 25 doctors here before, but now most have gone and there are just four of us left.”
Dr Gheriani has heard reports of fierce fighting at the shifting frontline near Ben Jawwad, a town some 40km (25 miles) west of Ras Lanuf, from those who have come from there. They say Gadafy loyalists have used women and children as shields and have taken up positions on rooftops to attack rebels.
“This is a critical time for us here in Libya. If Gadafy continues this and we don’t get international help, there will be a far bigger crisis,” says Dr Gheriani, whose wife Noha Bozreiba works as an obstetrician in Limerick. “The international community must enforce a no-fly zone so that he cannot bomb us from the air any more.”
Dr Gheriani, who arrived in Libya in the new year for a visit that was supposed to last until the end of February, decided to stay after getting caught up in the upheaval following the uprising in the east.
At the other end of Ras Lanuf, along neat, planned streets studded with palm trees and flowerbeds, Walid Ali and his friends skulk in an alleyway close to his home.
“My family is still here and now we are afraid to leave because we don’t know when Gadafy’s planes might come and bomb the roads,” says the 24-year-old oil worker.
His family is originally from Sirte, Gadafy’s hometown. The irregular rebel army fighting Gadafy’s forces around Ben Jawwad view Sirte as a major prize.
“If Sirte falls, it will be a huge psychological blow to Gadafy,” says one fighter. There are rumours that the killing by regime forces of several people belonging to a tribe based in Sirte has weakened the town’s fealty to Gadafy, but the claims are impossible to verify.
“It would be a mistake to think that all the people of Sirte are with Gadafy,” Walid insists. “Most people there loathe him because they know he is a criminal.”