Sounds of rockets echo in Libya's Ajdabiyah
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NATO's planes flew over Ajdabiyah when doctors in the town's hospital were doing surgery on an anti-government militant. The fighters guarding the hospital picked up their weapons and jumped onto trucks with machine guns after they heard their colleagues shouting "the government troops are moving here."
Within half an hour, hundreds of cars rushed towards Benghazi as people feared their town would become the battlefield for the fifth time in nearly two months.
The sound of the rockets targeting the government troops alarmed the fleeing people that fights have returned to the town.
Naji, a man in his fifties, has already sent his five children to Benghazi, the base for the anti-government insurgents.
His wife, who was washing clothes in the garage when the government troops broke into the town with tanks more than one month ago, was hit by a rocket and died.
"I have brought my children to Benghazi after their mother died because it is safe there. I have to come back to protect my house and shop," Naji said when showing us the debris of his car.
Most of the walls alongside the road in Ajdabiyah are covered with holes shot by bullets. Several houses hit by rockets were burnt down. The town that was home to about 150,000 residents before the unrest broke out only live with about five thousand now.
Only a few shops selling food and water opened in the daytime to provide supplies for both residents and militants in the front line.
Unlike Naji, Mohanmed kept his three children with him. " Gaddafi's troops will arrive in Benghazi in only an hour if they took my town Ajdabiyah. Nowhere is safe now," he said.
All schools in Benghazi and Ajdabiyah have been closed due to the severe clashes between forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and anti-government militants.
Since the unrest erupted on Feb. 17, dozens of children died or disappeared, whose pictures are hanged on the wall in "Revolutionary Square" in Benghazi.
The wall with hundreds of pictures on it is called "Martyr Wall, " in memory of those died or disappeared in the conflicts.
"I don't want to hear the gunshots, I am scared," said Hadai, a ten-year-old girl living in Benghazi.
"I want to go back to school to study history and draw pictures, " she said. "We are all expecting the unrest to end as soon as possible, so that my children can live and study in a peaceful society," her father said.
Hassen, a man in his forties who lives in Ajdabiyah, said his 16-year-old child was killed by the government troops when they beat the anti-government fighters and took the town last month.
"A rocket hit my bedroom in the second floor and the cement falling down buried my child," he said.
As many as 400 people have been killed in the town that is 60 km away from Brega since it has witnessed four fights between government troops and anti-government fighters, the residents said.
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