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Rockets, gunfire and the kindness of strangerss habablibya.org/news/rockets-g… #Libya
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Nick Meo reports on a turbulent week in Tripoli, marked by fear, fighting – and surprising acts of friendship.
The young fighters of the Zawiyah Brigade were jubilant. At their checkpoint, next to a school on the road to Muammar Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound a mile away, they were preparing to finish the Libyanleader.
His armies were collapsing and the rebels had penetrated the heart of Tripoli. By Monday, when it was clear they had taken the city, everyone was a revolutionary; homemade flags hung on buildings and from street lamps.
Earlier in the day at Green Square in the heart of the city, we had watched a handful of revolutionaries dancing and cheering. They were oblivious to the threat from snipers.
The streets of Tripoli were still dangerous though, and my driver wanted to go home.
The school being used by the Zawiyah Brigade as a headquarters seemed like a safe place to part company with him. But then, 30 minutes later, the rockets started falling, at first some way off, then closer.
As the sound of explosions echoed around the school courtyard, I decided it was time to go.
The road outside the school, where there had been plenty of traffic, was now empty. Rebels were now taking up firing positions. A fighter in a pick-up truck urgently gestured at me to jump in, and we roared up the road towards safety – then stopped.
By now black smoke billowed up from just beyond the school, and bullets zipped overhead as the fighters pointed their guns down the road, shouting “Allah Akbar”.
The main road was where the Gaddafi attack would come from, so I ran into a narrow side street. A few civilians fleeing their homes in cars would not stop. Eventually I came across a small group of people, all likewise running down the street as the terrible whoosh of rockets started.
“If you need to get to safety, come with me,” one of them said in English.
As explosions rang out behind us, we drove fast for a couple of blocks, then ran into his flat.
“You’re safe here,” the man said. His name was Adel Alyaser, 35, a post-graduate student of genetic engineering. After the mayhem outside the flat seemed unreal; pine furniture, thick carpets and a flat-screen television.
He supported the revolution – to my relief – and the two Kalashnikovs next to the front door were to defend him from the retreating Gaddafi troops who had thrown them away the day before.
Outside the noise from the battle was getting worse.
The mosques calling the faithful to prayer, rockets and bombs exploding, and the chatter of machine-gun fire all fused into a hum of painful sound.
“You should stay here. It is not safe on the streets, especially now night is coming,” Adel told me. “But here we are OK.”
What if Gaddafi troops came and started searching houses? He would be in a lot of trouble.
“I would be in a lot of trouble anyway,” he said, pointing to a revolutionary flag over his dresser.
“These bombs are the price we have to pay,” said his friend Wael Bishti, an engineer aged 32.
We sat in the dark – there was a power cut – wondering what was happening outside. The battle, which hours earlier the rebels seemed to have won, clearly still hung in the balance.
We didn’t know where the rockets were landing but they sounded frighteningly close. Later I discovered two homes in the next street had been hit.
Two days earlier, at Zintan south of Tripoli, Gaddafi’s downfall had been prematurely announced, unleashing an extraordinary barrage of shooting into the air in mistaken celebration.
The small town, which has become famous for its fighters, went mad with joy. At one point a fuel tanker was driving round the tiny roundabout which was the focus for the celebrations as an anti-aircraft gun was fired up into the sky.
