Evacuees speak of massacre by Gaddafi

FORCES loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi are staging a “massacre” in the besieged city of Misrata, evacuees said Monday, as Turkey said it was trying to broker a ceasefire to halt the bloodshed.

An official in neighbouring Algeria told Reuters that al-Qaida was exploiting the conflict to acquire weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.

The US State Department said it had raised concerns with the Libyan rebels about the Islamist group obtaining arms in the east of the country, where they are battling Gaddafi’s forces.

Evacuees from Misrata, the rebels’ last major stronghold in western Libya, described the city as “hell”. They said Gaddafi’s troops were using tanks and snipers against residents, littering the streets with corpses and filling hospitals with the wounded.

“You have to visit Misrata to see the massacre by Gaddafi,” said Omar Boubaker, a 40-year-old engineer with a bullet wound to the leg, brought to the Tunisian port of Sfax by a French aid group. “Corpses are in the street. Hospitals are overflowing.”

Misrata rose up with other towns against Gaddafi last month but is the only major one in western Libyan left in rebel hands.

“I could live or die, but I am thinking of my family and friends who are stranded in the hell of Misrata,” said tearful evacuee Abdullah Lacheeb, who had serious injuries to his pelvis and stomach and a bullet wound in his leg.

“Imagine, they use tanks against civilians. He (Gaddafi) is prepared to kill everyone there ... I am thinking of my family.”

Stalemate on the frontline of fighting in eastern Libya, defections from Gaddafi’s circle and the plight of civilians caught in fighting, or facing food and fuel shortages, have prompted a flurry of diplomacy to try to end the civil war.

Turkey said it was seeking to broker a ceasefire as an envoy from Gaddafi’s government arrived in Ankara from Athens.

“Turkey will continue to do its best to end the sufferings and to contribute to the process of making a road map that includes the political demands of Libyan people,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the arrival of Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi from earlier talks in Greece.

Turkey also expected officials of the rebel National Council to visit Ankara soon, Davutoglu told a news conference. A Turkish Foreign Ministry official said both sides had “conveyed that they have some opinions about a possible ceasefire”.

Beyond a willingness to talk, there was no sign of what Libya might offer to end the war, which is bogged down on a frontline around the eastern oil town of Brega.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who had spoken to Greek officials after Obeidi’s talks in Athens, dismissed the Libyan envoy’s message.

“A solution for the future of Libya has a pre-condition: that Gaddafi’s regime leaves and is out and that Gaddafi himself and his family leave the country,” Frattini said, adding that an interim government under one of Gaddafi’s sons was not an option.