THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: A town in western Libya is coming under almost as much fire as Misurata, writes Andrew Gilligan. But no one is paying much attention.
It is the unknown frontline in Libya's civil war, a rebel town besieged by Gaddafi's forces but almost ignored by the outside world.
Rockets and Scud missiles pour down. Water is running short. Tens of thousands are desperately trying to flee.
But transfixed by the horrors of Misurata, the international community - and the Nato military alliance - have all but overlooked the closely parallel drama in the mountain towns of Zintan and Yafran, little more than an hour's drive from the capital.
"We have been under fire for about an hour and a half now," said one Zintan resident, Mustafa Haider, by telephone from the town on Friday afternoon.
"From the south, from the north, from the east, from everywhere. They fire with Grad missiles, Scud missiles, anything. They have tried to enter Zintan many times but they couldn't." Homes, schools, and the town's main hospital had been hit, causing panic, he said.
A spokesman for Human Rights Watch, Fred Abrahams, accused the Libyan regime of committing "indiscriminate attacks" in the district. "They are firing into residential areas without targeting a military object," he said. "It is in essence the same tactic as in Misurata."
Zintan and Yafran are at the tip of the largest rebel-held pocket in western Libya - a crescent running along the Nafusa mountain range from the towns, south-west of Tripoli, to the Tunisian border. » | Andrew Gilligan, Ras al-Jedir, western Libya | Sunday, May 08, 2011
