Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford

on while the soldiers tear their belongings off the roof where they’ve been loaded, and throw them all over the ground as part of the ‘checking’ process.

      Finally, we are inside Zawiya. The streets are empty but Martin still reminds the driver to remove his pro-Gaddafi poster. We are in rebel territory now, or so we believe. No point taking chances. The driver nods appreciatively and stuffs it into his footwell. We can hear the distant rumble of shouting. We hear the sound just a few seconds before we see a wave of people marching over the brow in the distance. Our driver stops. They are so far away I can’t quite work out what it is they are waving. Are they flags or weapons? And what flags are they marching under? Who are they?

      Then, we see the rebels’ tricolour, the Libyan flag before Colonel Gaddafi’s coup in 1969, before he toppled King Idris and replaced it with his own all-green version. I jump out of the car at the same time as Martin is unravelling his legs and grabbing his camera gear. ‘Shall I stay with the taxi?’ says Tim. ‘No, take everything,’ I say. By this time the old man is very agitated. ‘No, no, come back. Danger, danger!’ he’s shouting. ‘It’s OK, don’t worry, we’re just going to see what’s happening. Wait for us, please,’ I reply.

      We walk quickly towards the crowd of advancing protesters, wondering how they’re going to react to us. This is the city filled with youngsters who have been duped into ‘destruction and sabotage with drugs and alcohol’, according to Gaddafi. I look back and I see the driver doing a panicky, fast three-point turn to get out of the way of these rowdy rebels. I hope he’s finding somewhere round the corner to park.

      And then the crowd is upon us. There’s a few seconds of nervousness as we wait to see how they react. But straight away they are welcoming. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ a few of them say in broken English. ‘Come, come.’ They are loud, they are angry and there are lots and lots of them. At first we think there are just a few hundred but soon we see, as the crowd snakes round corners and along streets, there are many more, running into thousands. We’re walking very quickly to keep up with them. It is steaming hot and within minutes we are sweating and puffing. The temperature has got to be in the high thirties now. The protesters are mostly on foot and the bulk of them are unarmed. In fact, they keep coming up and saying to us: ‘Look, Gaddafi said we had weapons. Where are the weapons?’

      I spot a man holding a rifle and make a point of interviewing him, asking him why he has a weapon. ‘Defence,’ he says. There is a van driving very slowly in the middle of the crowd with men hanging out of it. We jump on – partly so Martin can film as we’re moving along, partly to have a breather. One of the men clinging onto the frame of the open door is holding a small pistol. But these are exceptions in a sea of marchers. The rest of them don’t even have sticks or stones, nothing at all.

      They are mourning the loss of one of the rebel leaders, whom they have just buried in the city’s Martyrs’ Square. He has been shot by a Gaddafi sniper. They’re terrified of the snipers – of all the Gaddafi men who are inside the town – but they’re also furious.

      ‘Tell the world,’ one man says as we’re filming. ‘Please tell the world. We need help.’ ‘What help?’ I ask. ‘What do you want anyone to do?’ ‘We need the international community to help.’ Young boys are jumping up and down rather annoyingly in front of Martin’s camera lens. It’s an occupational hazard. There are children too here on this march but no women, no females at all except for me.

      They are heading towards the Gaddafi tanks, which are parked beneath the underpass and blocking the exit to Tripoli. We drop back a little. We don’t want to be right at the front when they meet up with Gaddafi’s army. Several hundred marchers go past us. I notice an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back of a pick-up truck which is driving along with us. ‘It’s one of ours,’ one of the men tells me. ‘We have had defections from the Gaddafi army and they brought some weapons.’

      Then, suddenly, there is the familiar crackle of machine-gun fire. It’s coming from the direction of the Gaddafi tanks. At first the crowd don’t really react but, as the shooting continues, all of a sudden men are running back, running away from the firing which just keeps on going on and on. Men are being shot in the back as they’re scrambling to get away. They’re collapsing on the intersection; they’re dropping as bullets hit them on the concrete flyover which straddles the tanks underneath. There are so many of them sprinting away that we are in danger of being knocked down in this bull-run stampede.

      We duck behind a wall which offers us a little protection as the crowds run past and the bullets follow. ‘Crawfie, we’ve got to get the fuck out of here,’ says Martin. He’s thinking, the tanks will be on us next, on us all. The soldiers will be coming on down this road, charging after the protesters. Then we have no chance. ‘Stay here, stay behind this wall.’ I’m panting. ‘We’ll just get caught up with the crowd if we run with them.’

      We’re cowering behind our wall but Martin can see through his camera that the people on the bridge who are trying to recover their injured friends are being shot at. He’s giving me a running commentary. I can see several figures lying on the ground ahead but they are too far away to make out exactly what’s going on. ‘They’ve been hit,’ Martin says. ‘Other guys are trying to bring them here.’ There’s still so much shooting that they are crawling along the road to reach their friends, too scared to stand upright. Several times they are driven back by the shooting but they keep edging farther on their stomachs, determined to reach the still bodies. A car reverses at speed up the embankment to reach one of them and bundles him into the back and then tears down the road again towards us, bullets flying past it. Ambulances scream down the road to pick up more of the wounded and they are fired on as well. This is a massacre.

      All over the place people are falling and being hit. The firing is indiscriminate and relentless, so relentless. Men are running for their lives, shoes scattering as they frantically try to escape the shooting. A few shout to us as they pass: ‘This is Gaddafi!’ and ‘Look what he does to us!’ Several are furious, yelling at us, anyone who will listen. Others seem to be in shock, scurrying past but with no real direction, constantly glancing over their shoulders at the tanks and soldiers behind, still firing. The rebel anti-aircraft weapon is driven up and fires towards the tanks. We’re both startled it’s actually shooting. It makes a tremendous noise because it’s so close. It fires off a volley of shots, but that almost immediately backfires dramatically. It just draws more fire from the Gaddafi lines. People are still running past us. We’re just watching, clinging to our wall, tucked in close to each other as this scene of mad, terrified panic goes on. With this amount of shooting, there must be many more casualties than those actually right in front of us. We can see several, but the flyover is obscuring our view and we don’t want to venture out into the middle of the road where the bullets are spitting.

      Yet more cars are driving past, screeching past, bundling the injured inside and driving off. We have to get to the hospital. A man is staggering towards us, a bullet wound in his chest. He’s being held up and helped by two friends, one either side. They’re half dragging, half carrying him. An ambulance pulls up and Martin just follows the injured man, who is muttering, ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great). He climbs in and I pile in after him. I look back and see Tim on the pavement. ‘I’ll see you at the hospital,’ he shouts.

      This is the first time we have seen any first-hand evidence of Gaddafi forces firing on predominantly unarmed civilians, the first time we have ourselves witnessed the cruelty of the regime. And it is cruel. It feels ugly and evil and very one-sided. I feel reluctant to mention (although I am duty-bound to do so) the very small number of weapons we have seen in a crowd of several thousand protesters because it seems to give the wrong impression. These were almost all unarmed, defenceless people, just marching, just shouting. What sort of a man, what sort of a leader, what sort of a regime orders the shooting of hundreds of his own countrymen, even children? This isn’t crowd control. This isn’t anything but shooting to kill and maim and injure and terrify. It’s difficult to feel anything but sympathy and fear for these defenceless people.

      Once the ambulance doors shut, it’s quiet. All we can hear is the sound of the injured man’s harsh breathing and his gasps