Medics at Benghazi's only trauma unit have been trying to aid those mangled and burnt, writes MARY FITZGERALD
ACROSS THE main entrance of al-Jala hospital, someone has fixed a large handwritten cardboard banner which reads: “The Hospital of the Martyrs”, in Arabic. Inside, past blue walls where families have pinned photographs of missing sons and brothers, the doctors and nurses of al-Jala, home to Benghazi’s only trauma unit, reflect on two weeks of horror.
After Libya’s uprising began here in mid-February, there was intense fighting for several days. Security forces and mercenaries fought unarmed protesters, often using heavy artillery including anti-aircraft guns. At the height of the violence, about a hundred people a day were being admitted with bullet wounds and other injuries, according to Dr Abdullah, al-Jala’s head of surgery. “It was a hell,” he says. “There were baths of blood, so many injured or dead. You cannot imagine the chaos. We were overwhelmed.”
The precise number of casualties in Benghazi remains unknown, but the number of dead is believed to run to more than 500, while the number injured is in the thousands.
Dr Abdullah displays some of the cartridges and missile casings left strewn on the ground where the worst clashes took place. “Look at the size of them,” he says. “And they were using these on unarmed civilians.”
He pulls out his mobile phone to show a photograph of a dead man who doctors believe may have been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. His body had been cut in two, with one half ending below his chest.
Another doctor shows footage of the chaotic scenes at the hospital as the mangled and burnt bodies of protesters arrived. The youngest treated at al-Jala was 13 years old.
“Most of the people we received here were shot in the head, chest and stomach at close range,” Dr Abdullah says. “This was not shooting to disperse protesters, this was shooting to kill.”
In al-Jala’s intensive care unit, there are several men whose bodies are held together only by metal frames.
Of those who will survive, many will be quadriplegic or require assistance in breathing. As I walk past, one young man, whose body lies twisted on the bed, lifts his hand to flash a victory sign.
“This was a war pitting military against young civilians,” says Dr Habib Mohammed.
“Most of the dead and injured were between the ages of 18 and 30 and they were carrying no weapons.”
He stops at the bed of Munir Majdoub, a 19-year-old medical student who was shot in the neck. “If he survives, he will not move for the rest of his life,” Dr Habib whispers. “But he is unlikely to make it, given the severity of his injuries.”
In the morgue, nine unzipped body bags reveal bodies charred beyond recognition, with limbs shrivelled and blackened. The corpses were found inside a vehicle in the military base in Benghazi.
Doctors believe they were soldiers who refused to fire on the protesters, and so were executed and their bodies burnt.
Across the city in the Hawari hospital, Dr Jamal Benamer, whose wife, Gina, is from Dublin, shows an X-ray of one youth who was admitted during the protests. It shows hundreds of metal shards lodged inside his head and neck.
Nearby, a 23-year-old with similar injuries repeatedly grasps at his sheet.
Another man, Nasr, survived being shot in the neck and chest. “Thank God, I am lucky to be alive,” he says with a smile. Dr Jamal describes the type of bullet used in Nasr’s case. “In Arabic we have a name for it which means that which penetrates and burns,” he says.
“And the weapons they used included far worse. What we have seen in Benghazi was a massacre.”