Ruined Sirte becomes a killing ground as Gaddafi loyalists face destruction, but mete out death of their own
For nine days, forces of the new Libyan government have been trying to seize the last area of Sirte still under Gaddafi loyalist control - with horrific destruction all around.
National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters take part in a street battle in the center of Sirte, Libya Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
It was envisaged by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as a model of what a modern African city should be: a brilliant panoply of university and hospitals, with a glittering seafront and a marble-lined conference centre to host leaders from around the world.
But this weekend the centre of Sirte, the birthplace of the former Libyan leader and lavished with money and attention for that reason, is a squalid ruin in which a pocket of diehard Gaddafi loyalists - outnumbered and outgunned - are slogging it out in a desperate, destructive attempt to delay their inevitable defeat.
The shattered remains of housing blocks and the wreckage of once comfortable homes, after nine days of intense pounding and bombardment, are more reminiscent of the grimmest scenes from Grozny, towards the end of Russia's bloody Chechen war, than of anything seen in Libya so far.
And the area around the grid of streets where anything between 200 and 500 loyalists are still holding out have become a killing ground, with loyalists, civilians and forces of the new Libyan government dying by the day.
Yesterday came the most vivid accounts yet of what is happening behind the loyalist lines, where gunmen have been executing anyone believed to have sympathies with the revolutionaries, according to one man who claimed to have survived such a massacre.
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