Living under shells
Four year old Mohamed hides behind the door of his home. He is nervous, and has had many sleepless nights recently. Unlike the families who fled to the desert, Mohamed’s family decided to stay in Ajdabiya during the fierce fighting that erupted between Qaddafi loyalists and rebel fighters.
“There was firing everywhere, my family was terrified” says Abdil Gadir, Mohamed’s father. A few nights ago, two shells hit their home. “It just went boom, boom, boom” he says, talking of that night. At 11pm, his home was rocked as a shell pierced the roof of the family’s bathroom.
Ajdabiya was retaken by rebels yesterday, but the city is now without electricity or water. The local hospital has been evacuated and is all but closed, and rebels continue to man the checkpoint of the western gate to the city, fearful of returning troops. The front-line in this stretch of the Libyan desert is in constant flux, with fighting regularly breaking out in both Ajdabiya and nearby Brega.