Twenty-six unmarked makeshift graves covered by breeze-blocks were discovered at a water treatment plant in Number Two district where pro- Qaddafi fighters put up a final stand after several weeks of heavy bombardment. AFP
Volunteers are still finding dozens of bodies in Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte that fell on October 20, including of Libyan civilians killed in a suspected NATO air strike. Twenty-six unmarked makeshift graves covered by breeze-blocks were discovered at a water treatment plant in Number Two district where pro- Qaddafi fighters put up a final stand after several weeks of heavy bombardment. As a pungent odor filled the air due to the bodies’ state of decomposition, the shallow graves in the sand were found scattered amidst the plant’s devastated buildings, an AFP correspondent on the spot said. According to Ibrahim Suleiman, one of the volunteers collecting bodies in Sirte over the past week, they were of pro- Qaddafi fighters hastily buried by comrades as new regime forces closed in on the city. In the center, at the crossroads of Dubai and September 1 streets, Libyan charity Jabal al-Akhdar told AFP more than 50 bodies of civilians were found under the rubble of a several-story building flattened in a NATO air strike. “There are more than 50 civilians under the rubble, of women, of children. It’s horrible. We can’t get access. It would take bulldozers,” said a teary-eyed member of the charity, Mohammed Muftah. Local residents backed up the account of an air strike that left behind a huge crater of the type that could not have been left by weapons used by Qaddafi’s fighters or their foes in the National Transitional Council.
