My colleague C.J. Chivers reports on Thursday from the besieged Libyan city of Misurata, which he reached on an aid ship chartered by the International Organization for Migration.
small girl with terrible wounds just left operating room in misurata, libya. shrapnel wounds to neck and torso.
As he explains, since February, rebels in the city have been “largely cut off from the world by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Front lines cross through several of its neighborhoods, and artillery or rocket batteries fire their munitions into the neighborhoods.” On Thursday, medical officials there said that at least 23 people were killed by shelling near the port, which is under rebel control and is their lifeline to the outside world.
This week, a television crew from Britain’s ITN also made it into the city by boat and filed this harrowing report on how the city is being defended by protesters, like the owner of a clothing shop and a physicist, who picked up weapons:
Earlier on Thursday, before the I.O.M. ship was able to make it into Misurata, Matt Weaver of The Guardian conducted this interview with a spokesman for the organization, who explained that the group hoped to use the boat to evacuate some of the estimated 6,000 migrant workers who had been trapped by fighting in the city: