Atrocities Abound in War-Torn Tripoli

Both Regime, Rebels Seen Massacring Captives

by Jason Ditz, August 26, 2011

A growing number of accounts across Tripoli suggest that both the NATO-backed rebels and the Gadhafi regime’s remnant forces are committing brutal atrocities in the Libyan capital, with evidence that each side has taken to massacring captives from the other side.

Reports from escaped regime prisoners say that the Gadhafi forces killed a number of captured rebels, while yesterday a number of regime troops were found bound and executed, the apparent victims of a rebel onslaught.

It doesn’t end there, either, as hundreds of bodies were found in a Tripoli hospital, apparently abandoned by doctors and staff when the fighting got too close. Some locals blamed the Gadhafi forces for killing a number of those inside.

Meanwhile, the rebel forces that took over Abu Salim, a neighborhood long held by regime-loyal troops, stacked the bodies of dark-skinned victims in a captured hospital of their own, claiming they were proof that the regime is using “mercenaries” from other African nations. The rebels have been accused of arresting black people under the assumption that they are all mercenaries, though many of their detainees appear to just be random migrant workers.

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