[gatagato]

TRIPOLI — The corpses were splayed on gurneys and rotting. One still had an intravenous tube in his arm. Each body was dumped to the ground, rolled in plastic and heaved to the pile on a truck in a ritual repeated dozens of times without ceremony.

The discovery of as many as 200 bodies at Abu Salim hospital in Tripoli was an appalling scene to witness. Masks did little to filter the stench. The men on duty sprayed the air with deodorizer thinking it might help. It didn't.

We were told that doctors and staff abandoned the hospital during fierce fighting. That was nearly a week ago. When rebels took control of the area a few days ago doctors returned to the hospital, which by then was effectively a mass morgue.

It is unclear how the men, women and children died. The bodies we saw were those of Gadhafi loyalists who were wounded in battle. A poster of Moammar Gadhafi presided over a room slick with blood, water and maggots.

At least two men were shot in their beds. They were on the second floor covered with blankets. As the gurneys were wheeled away you could see where a bullet had passed through the pillow. The blood on the wall hinted at an execution. One of the bodies had a Libyan military card identifying him as a special forces member.

Nobody there claimed to know whether it was Gadhafi or rebel gunmen who executed them. I asked one doctor to give his opinion on how long the two men had been dead. He estimated two or three days, then shook his head and walked down the blood-streaked corridor.

With the battle for Libya in its seventh month the scope of the violence and the lines it has drawn is coming into sharper view. There are claims of atrocities on both sides: Amnesty International says it has evidence the Gadhafi regime employed torture, rape and murder. Rebels are also accused of killing prisoners.

The truth may never be known at Abu Salim hospital. The disposal of each body into the truck was punctuated in the same way: the stinking gurney was kicked down the sloping driveway so it could roll into a parking lot that by sunset was full.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/201...adhafi-110827/

Tripoli hospital horror as patients die
Libya: putrefying bodies found in Tripoli hospital
Bizarre Scenes at Former Abu Salim Hospital
LIBYA: Hundreds of bodies found at abandoned Tripoli hospital

A man looks at the dead bodies in the morgue at he general hospital in the restive Abu Salim neighborhood of Tripoli, on August 26, 2011.


A BBC correspondent found the bodies of men, women and children on beds and in the corridors of a hospital in the Abu Salim district of the capital.

[sassieroses]

That is HORRIBLE!!! When the doctors and nurses are forced to flee what does that say about the hope for that area???? It's just beyond sad!

[vnathan]

They fled because of the fighting. Doctors are not immortal you know.

[Faline]

I can imagine the smell in that hospital

[kellyhound]

the smell of rotting corpses must be awful.

[Soar]

What a horrible sight.

[rob666]

Pretty sure Ghadaffi loyalists didn't execute their own in a hospital.....

[etown780]

Wow horrible!!! I'd say that hospital is going to need some serious sanitation action. Or burn it..

[fattubbashit]

Whats more disgusting is the fact they have sheets to cover the dead when im busy trying to get my gore woody on. Serious FUCKING war crime !!!!!

[justfighter]

Serve them right...im from croatia...we had a war and only time when hospital staff abandoned the hospital during the war was when Serbs took over Vukovar and forced the wounded and the staff out hospital and led them to Ovcara to kill em....during the siege of both vukovar and sarajevo doctors came in ...not out of besiged towns...that is the point right?...both my parents were doctors and left for battlefield in the first days of combat to treat wounded on both sides and to save lives