I began preparing for this article by consulting Google maps and keying in Misurata (or Misratah).

Taking a plumb line south from Malta, Tripoli is slightly to the west, and Misurata is slightly to the east.

Misurata is thus almost as near to Malta as Tripoli is. Actually, on doing a simple exercise, I found out that Misurata is closer to Malta than it is to Benghazi.

Unfortunately, most of the coverage of the war in Libya is brought to us by foreign news agencies and the main ones used by the Maltese media are foreign news services which are not that much interested in what is going on in embattled Libya. Or, if they are interested, they tell the story mostly from the point of view of the countries of the West, either the US which has pulled out of the fighting, or the British etc news services which have more.

Mainly, however, what we get are news reportages from Benghazi and the yo-yo front line on the road to Adjabija or Brega.

It is only in the past days that we have started to get real reportages from Misurata, the city that is a thorn in Gaddafi’s side since it is the third largest city in Libya and has been steadfastly on the rebel side, even if it is cut off from the rest of the rebel-held east by hundreds of miles of desert and is just 200 kilometres distant from Tripoli.

Misurata is a daily challenge to the Gaddafi forces.

For the past two months, the Gaddafi army, with foreign mercenaries including very-well trained women snipers from Colombia, it seems, has been besieging the city.

The city is now split in two – the part near the sea is held by the rebels and the part nearer the desert is all under Gaddafi’s forces. The Gaddafi forces have tanks, Grad missiles and, as reported yesterday, cluster bombs.

The rebels pressed on all sides in the city centre have nothing except small arms and their own incredible resourcefulness. They have held the Gaddafi forces at bay for two months, suffered incredible amount of punishment, and yet they have not surrendered, nor do they intend to surrender, for they know if they surrender they will be butchered.

Try watching this newsclip shown on ITV (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/04/13/135385476/from-misurata-video-of-a-fathers-desperate-dash-to-hospital) which shows in a very graphic way what it means to be in this besieged city. It was taken by an intrepid ITV news team which I believe came back through Malta.

Slowly, the Misurata story is being told to the world. This is a Deutsche Press Agentur link by Kate Thomas in which Misurata refugees tell of snipers, mercenaries, corpses (http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/africa/news/article_1633388.php/Misurata-refugees-tell-of-snipers-mercenaries-corpses)

Or this one from Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/2011415175535792410.html) about how the rebels are organised but overwhelmed in the city.

“The wealthy seaside suburb of Ghasr Ahmed is scarred with shrapnel, unexploded rockets and destroyed buildings. Beside the children’s swings and a well-tended salad patch there is a pile of rubble that was once the opulent home of four families. Shards of shrapnel from the blast are embedded in the mosque over 100 metres away.

“A grocery store was flattened in a nearby street one morning last week. “When they hit the shop, there were 15 [people] inside. They struck early [in the] morning; many women were shopping with their children there. The ambulance took them to hospital, I don’t know how many died,” says shop owner Ibrahim Mohammed Guzi.

“The tin roof of the British Petroleum warehouse is now a patterned constellation; the shrapnel of a rocket has littered the dark painted roof with holes that reveal the sunlight outside.

“The bed where Mohammed Jabo slept in a house nearby is strewn with concrete debris from the hole in the roof where another rocket hit − just above where he and his wife were sleeping. They survived the blast, but Jabo lost his leg.”

Robin Wigglesworth reported from Benghazi to the Financial Times: “The coastal city’s power and water supply has reportedly been cut, and tanks and artillery are indiscriminately shelling the population, say rebels. They estimate that more than 1,000 people have been killed during the six-week blockade.

“The National Transitional Council, the rebel government based in Benghazi, is sending small fishing boats filled with, food, supplies, spare weapons and some volunteer fighters to Misurata, and evacuating women, children and the wounded.

“A ship comes and goes almost every day,” said Muftah, a senior port official in Benghazi. “We will fight forever, until Gaddafi goes.”

“Opposition leaders in Misurata have said that they have enough people to fight back but lack weapons to defend the city, so youths in Benghazi are making small, homemade bombs out of sardine boxes and empty dry milk cans stuffed with explosives for shipment to the town.

“It’s dangerous to make them but we have to help Misurata,” said Elmontasser El-Fessi, a youth leader in Benghazi. “We don’t have enough guns.”

“The so-called ‘gelatino’ bombs, usually used to hunt fish, are shipped on board fishing boats that have been shuttling aid and refugees between Misurata and Benghazi. They were also used by young rebel fighters in the battles to take control of several eastern towns.”

This is a report by CJ Chivers which

appeared in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/africa/15libya.html) and tells how the Libyan port city is filled with migrants desperate to exit. Many of these hundreds of people are camped down at the port, exposed to anything the Gaddafi forces throw at them. Most are sub-Saharans and have no money to get an almost impossible place on a ship and go back home.

And this is a Telegraph report on a mass funeral in the city (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8451477/Libya-Misurata-mourns-its-dead-as-Gaddafi-strikes-continue.html)

And this is a report by Lourdes Garcia Navarro from NPR News after she and other correspondents based in Tripoli were bussed to Misurata by the Gaddafi regime: “This area of Misurata, about a mile from the centre of the city, is a ghost town. The buildings are peppered with shrapnel. Gaddafi troops taking shelter inside them and on rooftops. Libyan soldiers are moving around the city now in civilian vehicles − mainly in four by fours and pickup trucks − trying to disguise themselves to avoid aerial attacks.

“One captain boasted to reporters it would only take a few weeks to route the rebels. He went on to acknowledge that Nato airstrikes had damaged the Libyan Army’s capability, but insisted that everything was under control.

“A shot rang out and suddenly the captain clutched his head, blood pouring down his face. He was bundled into a car and taken to the hospital. The wound wasn’t fatal but the very fact of it belied his confident words.

“Journalists dove for cover and then about 20 minutes after having gotten to Misurata, we were told to leave for our safety.

“On the way back, we met up with a busload of diplomats. The ambassadors of the Philippines, Cuba and Venezuela, along with representatives of Serbia and Turkey had been promised that they would have lunch in the centre of Misurata. Instead, they were taken to the site of a Nato airstrike, miles away from the city. The fact-finding trip they were supposedly on, not really illuminating them very much.

“The Venezuelan ambassador said it was a shame. We showed them video footage of what we had witnessed in the city that day, the closest they’ve gotten, they said, to seeing for themselves what is really happening in Misurata.”

(http://www.npr.org/2011/04/09/135266051/no-victory-in-misurata-despite-gadhafis-claims)

All the above is culled from far more numerous reportages over the past day or two.

Misurata today is the Sarajevo of 2011, where deeply unequal forces battle it out and a terrified civilian population is caught in the middle, where children are maimed, killed or orphaned, where hospitals are shot at, and where sheer might has yet to conquer the indomitable spirit of freedom-lovers.

And yet the outside world looks on and still hesitates to stop the carnage. Will it be a Sarajevo again, a place from hell where thousands were allowed to be killed before the world stepped in?

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