The Libyan government’s attempts to show how Nato bombing is harming civilians backfired when a hospital worker revealed that a seven-month-old “air strike victim” had been injured in a car crash.
Foreign journalists in Tripoli were taken by bus to a hospital on Sunday night to see the seven-month-old girl, Nasib, who lay unconscious. Media handlers claimed she had been hurt when a bomb exploded in a field near her house on the eastern edge of the capital a few hours earlier.
But a member of the medical staff slipped a note written in English on hospital stationery to a reporter, which was seen by Reuters, that said: “This is a case of road traffic accident. This is the truth.”
Journalists’ suspicions had already been raised during an earlier visit to the bombsite in the suburb of Tajura where the girl was said to have been injured.
Talking to journalists, Mohamed Elounsi, the son of the owner of the field, described how a black and white dog and a dozen or so chickens and pigeons had been killed in the evening strike, but said nobody had been injured.
Elounsi said: “I lost my birds, one dog and my cows nearly died.” Shockwaves from the blast destroyed a room in one house and shattered numerous windows, he said. “My message to Obama is, ‘Why do you send this [bomb] to my father’s farm.'”
Residents gathered around the crater, measuring two metres by one metre, chanting pro-Muammar Gaddafi slogans. Initially, none of them mentioned any civilian casualties and there seemed little real anger. It was only shortly before the bus departed that one neighbour said his four-year-daughter suffered cuts when a glass door shattered.
Government silence
At the hospital, Gaddafi’s aides directed the media to Nasib, whose bandaged foot was hooked up to medical equipment. A man introduced as her uncle said she had been injured in the Tajura missile strike.
A second man, presented as a neighbour and a member of the health ministry, ranted against Nato and shouted “God, Muammar, Libya, and that’s all”.
This man, who gave his name as Emad, was mysteriously present once more when journalists were taken to another suburb at 1am on Monday. This time, a “bomb” had landed in a back garden at about midnight “while the family were having lunch”, according to a man presented as a spokesperson for the family.
The two metre-long bomb had fallen from the sky, he said, implying it came from a Nato jet. It had not exploded, however, and appeared less like an example of cutting-edge warfare than a remnant of the Cold War. Closer inspection showed there was Russian writing on the bomb.
That fact was put to Emad, who had since admitted he was a member of Gaddafi’s media team, while still insisting he was also a neighbour of the seven-month-old girl. Emad’s story of the midnight bomb suddenly changed: Nato must have struck a nearby military compound, triggering an explosion that caused this missile — a piece of Gaddafi’s own arsenal — to shoot off into a nearby garden.
Late on Monday morning, government representatives had not offered any official comment on the Russian bomb or on the seven-month girl and her link — or not — to the curious incident on the farm.
This was no real surprise because Gaddafi’s regime appears to have given up on putting across any formal message to the foreign media in Tripoli. Since last Wednesday, the government has been almost completely silent, holding only a single press conference on the war’s effect on Libyan business.
The visits to see damage caused by Nato bombs, which the government says has killed more than 700 civilians while offering little evidence to support the claim, also dried up until the sudden burst of activity of Sunday.
The first trip was to the St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church, where Father Timothaus Bishara Adly explained that several nights of Nato strikes last week blew out many of the church windows. There was no structural damage, but a large military warehouse next door, the target of the attack, had been completely destroyed. However, government minders would not allow any of the journalists to get a close view. “That is not our goal,” said one. – guardian.co.uk