In Ravaged Tripoli, Bodies Left on Streets

As Libya seemingly slips out of his control, Moammar Gadhafi’s forces rained what witnesses described as “small bombs” down on Tripoli last night, as helicopters, special forces, and foreign mercenaries shot freely at protesters. “It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” one witness tells the New York Times. “They were strafing these people.” Ambulances were impossible to find, another resident told the Washington Post, because Gadhafi’s mercenaries had burned them—or were riding them through the streets and shooting from them.

But in eastern Libya, opposition protesters seem to have entirely taken control, and armed themselves from local warehouses. “People’s committees” are in charge, and one CNN reporter was apparently able to enter the country freely from Egypt. In Benghazi, the military has defected to join the protesters, according to al-Jazeera, but medical supplies are low. One Tripoli neighborhood is littered with dead bodies, and one doctor reported seeing “bodies that are divided in three, four parts. Only legs, and only hands.” (More Moammar Gadhafi stories.)