Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford

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      UNDER SIEGE

      We have no idea how we are going to get out of Zawiya but we know we have to – and with the pictures. If we don’t make it out with the pictorial hard evidence, then this really has all been for nothing. The pain of the people of Zawiya – and our pain – will have been for nothing. That is not an option.

      The medics and the people at the hospital – some fighters, mostly civilians – are worried, too, about the destiny of our film which shows the true fight for their city. We keep having to disappoint them by saying no, we haven’t got any of the pictures out yet. No one has seen what is happening here but I keep reassuring them that I am telling the outside world but only by telephone right now. They look crestfallen, let down. We haven’t brought a Began or any other way of transmitting pictures. (A Began is a small portable transmitter, about the size of a laptop, which transports images via satellite.) There’s no Internet in the town, so that form of transmitting pictures is also out. We have to either smuggle the pictures out, or preferably ourselves and the pictures. The question is: how?

      We are offered medical gowns as a disguise. There is a fear in the hospital that the army is not beyond storming this place to look for us or recover its injured or dead soldiers. We take the gowns gratefully and greedily – grasping at anything which might offer us some protection, however slight. We rush to put them on, but we feel odd and look faintly ridiculous.

      The doctors have even given us medical facemasks in an attempt to hide our European look. Martin and I try these on with the rest of the new kit while Tim is outside making a call on the satellite phone. And then we take them off again. Deep down we realize that if it gets to the stage of the army entering the hospital it’s probably curtains for us all anyway.

      Some of the Opposition fighters are already wearing medical gowns and many of them don’t inspire us with confidence. One in particular, we think, is trying to persuade us to hand over our precious pictures. Is he just masquerading as a rebel? Is he really a government stooge? Are we becoming paranoid? A few of the rebel fighters appear to be staying in the hospital because they feel a little bit safer. But, to be honest, everyone is a ‘rebel’ here.

      There isn’t a single person we talk to who doesn’t castigate Gaddafi, his forces or his sons. They are coping with the consequences of his heartlessness. They are patching up the broken bones, torn ligaments and cracked skulls of their neighbours in Zawiya, their relatives and their friends. If they were rabidly or even slightly pro-Gaddafi before this onslaught, it isn’t hard to understand why they have done a handbrake turn, changing their minds and attitudes.

      We are repeatedly urged by those in the hospital to see and film the growing number of injured – in the Intensive Care Unit and in the general wards. Martin and I are taken to the basement to see a row of dead Gaddafi soldiers. The bodies are in a quite horrible state but the medics want to show us they are not Libyan. ‘These are not Libyan faces,’ one tells us. ‘See, they are from Chad or Niger – mercenaries.’

      I’m not sure how they are so certain about their nationalities, but there’s no question they do look very different from the Libyan faces we see all around us. The medics keep on stressing this point to us – that these people are not from Libya. It is important to them. Fellow Libyans would find it much harder, find it abhorrent to fire on their own. At least that seems to be their thinking. But, in their minds, Gaddafi is showing his utter contempt for Libyan life, demonstrating his savagery and confirming his madness by buying in mercenaries to kill his own people. They insist Gaddafi forces have entered the hospital in the past and taken away their injured and dead. It sounds preposterous. I am ashamed to say I write this off as paranoia. I don’t quite believe it. But again I note the growing feelings of paranoia inside myself at the same time. I have been in Libya for a little over two days. These people have lived with the dictator for forty-two years.

      We go about our various tasks. Tim is urgently trying to find someone who can drive us out of Zawiya and is in constant communication with the London office. Martin is still being taken round the wards to see the range of horrible injuries. I go down to the front entrance, where the accident and emergency department is. I just want to see what’s going on there.

      There’s a crowd at the hospital entrance, gatherings of doctors and nurses and plenty of other people too. The hospital has turned into the main meeting area aside from Martyrs’ Square. The entrance is also packed with hospital beds on wheels – ready for the next round of casualties. Martin has joined me by now. Then we hear the rumble of traffic. We see a convoy of military vehicles driving along the road running parallel to the A&E’s entrance. The army is heading back into Zawiya to give the people in the Square another pounding. Within minutes we hear the sound of shelling and rockets firing. All those people we left behind – in the mosque, in the Square, in the hotel – are under attack again. We can’t have been here in the hospital for much more than half an hour. It crosses my mind that if we hadn’t jumped in that ambulance when we did, we would still be in the thick of it.

      Now, as we’re making our way through the hospital corridors, the staff are greeting us, nodding appreciatively, catching our eyes and occasionally saying things like: ‘Welcome, welcome,’ and ‘Thank you, Sky News.’ Everyone seems to know who we are.

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