I am a paramedic from the Libyan Red Crescent in Ajdabiya. Gaddafi’s forces attacked a hospital in Ajdabiya. They destroyed three ambulances and they stole two. These cars were taken out of the hospital, and we couldn’t help as much.

He attacked the hospital in a village. A doctor was killed, and a lot of civilians were killed— and they don’t have anything to do with the revolution. Ajdabiya is under the control of the people after the interference of America, Britain, and France.

Egypt is supplying food and medical equipment, and America, Britain and France are helping us get rid of Gaddafi.

-Mohammed Ali

According to the soldier standing guard at this building, it used to be a security forces outpost. The Egyptian Security Forces were notorious for torturing prisoners. Activists in Salloum ransacked this building on Al Raeisi Street during the Egyptian Revolution.

I snuck one photo in before the guard told us not to take pictures or take anything with us. Bassem [my translator and partner in crime] tried to take random papers he found on the ground, but the guard wouldn’t let him. The place had a really unsettling vibe. As if you can feel that you’re entering a place where people suffered.

Faythe Al Mabrouk, 48, lived in Tobrouk and worked as an accountant before Libya erupted into protests and then war. Mabrouk explains the roots of the revolution and the eventual retreat of Gaddafi’s forces from Ben Ghazi.

I saw an ad on Facebook telling us about the revolution coming on the 17th of February.

In Ben Ghazi the security guards working for Gaddafi killed young people who were unarmed on February 17, 2005. It was a small revolution where 25 activists were killed. That’s why they picked the 17th of February to start the revolution this year.

Of course it was peaceful, no weapons. We just wanted our needs to be heard, but then the police came along and they fired bullets at the activists and killed them. When the 17th of February 2011 was coming, people told each other to go out for a peaceful revolution.

Gaddafi has a lot of spies. He found out about the revolution, so he announced that he’s going to have a counter protest. The young activists decided to make theirs the 15th so they can be ahead of him and avoid conflict with Gaddafi forces. The people went out in Ben Ghazi around 4:30am Feb 15th. They were repeating “Rise, rise, Ben Ghazi!” early in the morning when the people woke up. The people joined them. The first spark was in Ben Ghazi, and then it spread to Al Bayda.

Of course Gaddafi prepared commandos and militias from Nicaragua and from other African countries in Labra Airport. In Al Jabal Al Akhdar. they were having special training but they did not have experience with the roads and they got lost in the streets. The activists had no weapons, but then Gaddafi’s forces got lost in the streets and they couldn’t go back to the airport.

Conflict broke out between Gaddafi’s forces and the young activists. There is no military in Libya. We have security legions to stop the protesting, and all of the legions are run by relatives of Gaddafi. These security legions have a lot of developed weapons and all of the equipment needed for war.

The people of Ben Ghazi attacked the Al Faidel Bin Omar security legion. They are named after a friend of Omar Al Mukhtar, who freed Libya from Italian occupation. In Tobrouk there is another security legion named Omar Al Mukhtar. The legions are named after great people, which is wrong because they’re harming us. The young activists accomplished an invasion of the Al Faidel Bin Omar base using tractors in a suicidal mission.

The young activists attacked the door with the tractor and broke in and started killing them until the security forces took over. They found militia members and caught them. They found a lot of prisons underground. They found a Libyan man who had been held prisoner since 1990. This legion has an underground prison. In the beginning the revolutionaries didn’t have enough weapons, so they took all of the weapons from this legion and then they went to Tobrouk and got into a battle with Omar Makthoar security legion and took their weapons. Then Gaddafi started to gather his army and attack cities.

In Obbari they made a base and they started training the militia. From Sebha in Southern Libya they collect people from the African countries. They’re very simple-minded people and they seduce them with money. They said if you fight the war with us we will pay you 1,000 dollars a day. They give them weapons and training and fly them to the battlefield. And these militias will get into the big cities for the sake of fighting the civilians. They trained them very well.

We freed Ben Ghazi, Toboruk, Al Bayda and Darna. Right now I heard that Ben Ghazi is safe. There was around 1,400 soldiers and 400 tanks heading towards Ben Ghazi to wipe out all of the people. The airplanes from America, France, and Britain stopped their progress.

Some of Gaddafi’s soldiers went into Ben Ghazi in private cars— not military cars. When the firing of missiles started, they changed into civilian clothes and they went to Ben Ghazi. They started sniping people. You see one and you feel like he is Libyan, just like you. He dresses like us, he talks like us. This continued for quite some time until we kicked them all out and purified the city from these people.

Gaddafi’s soldiers started to get lost in the desert. Now they are just waiting for the revolutionaries to come so they can surrender to them. They don’t have any food and they don’t have any ammo. The revolutionaries said they can go out and surrender. They’re negotiating on the weapons. They gave us their weapons and they got out of Ajdabiya.

I thank America, because if it wasn’t for them, we would have all been killed. We would have been wiped out. The Arabs didn’t interfere because they don’t have as many weapons as America, Britain and France. They are able to reach and help ASAP but Arabs cannot do that. America Britain and France insisted that they will come here ASAP. It is in our favor that they came, but we don’t want them to have any bases.

Abd-Sallam used to work in a small media company in Turablos. He arrived with his family at 9am the day we spoke to him (March 23rd). His mother was sick, so he brought her to Egypt for medical care. He told us about the situation in Ben Ghazi.

Last Saturday most people left Ben Ghazi and they went to the western region. Gaddafi wanted to wipe out this region. He wanted to demolish it and kill everybody. 

Saturday Gaddafi came with tanks. It was ugly. It was like he was going to war with a major country: missiles, bullets, tanks— things that you might have seen in Al Jazeera or Al-Arabiya [ie: the news]. He even hit the people with missiles. 

I live in a place called Gowarsa. Gaddafi’s forces went there and then to Dar Yunis and kept advancing, but God helped us in the last moment.

We [the revolutionary forces*] attacked the troops, but we were not equal in power. We fought, but we are not as powerful. We don’t have heavy weapons, we have machine guns and hunting rifles. Gaddafi’s forces have modern weapons and heavy weapons. I’ve never seen these kinds of weapons before. They were huge tanks with very big rifles on the side. 

It was like a dream…it was like movies…I can’t believe what I saw because it was so horrible. I was afraid in Ben Ghazi. Everything was closed. Shops were closed, hospitals were closed. Everybody was afraid. Some left and went to Al Bayda, and some people came to Egypt. The United States, Britain and France were sent from God to save the Libyan people. Victory comes from God, but they were here to help us. If Gaddafi took control of the Ben Ghazi area and Tobrouk, he would have wiped the people out.

[I came here because] Libyans from the eastern region come to Egypt a lot. I have family in Egypt. The Egyptian people and the Libyan people are related. We have cousins and sisters and brothers in here.

Still, nobody wants to leave their country. I just want to stay here until my mother is well. Hopefully Libya will be okay again, and I will go back. We will leave in peace and live freely. This is all we want— to live freely and peacefully. We are not tribes. From border to border, we are all Libyans.

*I realize most American press has been referring to the anti-Gaddafi forces as ‘rebel forces,’ but the way they refer to themselves translates more closely into ‘revolutionary forces.’

Salloum sits on the sea, snug between Egypt and Libya. The border itself is just a 10 minute drive up the hill. The border is porous. People explained that they were Egyptian, but had family in Libya, or that they lived in Libya, but half of their tribe was in Egypt. 

The border guard agreed that people who had family in Libya could enter. Bassem explained to him that we were going to write a story for an American website, and that he was my translator. Then he said under his breath in English “STOP nodding” so our story of him being my translator would make more sense. Bassem had no passport and I had no press pass, so we were dismissed and headed to the empty tents set up by the border.

I had assumed they were refugee camps, but a bunch of Egyptian soldiers in uniform ran up. They were amused by the novelty of people trying to interview them. No one was being treated there. It was an eerie and lonely scene. 

We went back down the hill, past the tents, into the town. Ibrahim Mohammed Khair-Allah, an Egyptian cab driver, told us he had been driving to Tobrouk in Libya every day for the past three days. 

“From Tobrouk to Salloum it’s calm,” he said, seeming very confident in the safety of his job. He described the carloads of supplies coming from the coastal Egyptian town Marsa Matrouh to the border, and the assistance the Egyptian army is giving fleeing Libyans.

“A lot of Egyptians are coming from Libya everyday. The Egyptian military helps them on their own expense. The military is facilitating their movement, food and medication. Everything is under control,” said Khair-Allah.

Ibrahim Nasr Hamid, 27, was part of the revolutionary forces during the beginning of the protests until he became ill. He recounts the days in Ajdabiya before he fled to Egypt, and the circumstances he left behind. 

I got sick and went to El Moneer hospital in Ajdabiya for an operation. There was something wrong with my stomach. I decided to recuperate in Egypt, so I went to the bus stop to take the bus to Egypt. Then a missile hit a nearby building. People died in this attack. My Egyptian friend was injured in his leg. This was Tuesday around 4pm. My brother was killed by the Gaddafi forces in the same day at 5pm. He was 15-years-old.

The pro-Gaddafi forces fired missiles at us while we were inside our homes. They hit us at home and they also hit the clinic. Children and women were killed. Little girls were killed. The neighborhood where the Sudanese and Mauritanians lived was wiped out. The entire neighborhood was wiped out. Three security guards were killed by the missiles. There was a lot of crime in Ajdabiya after this. 

So the people blocked the entrances to our city. Groups would secure the streets. We did neighborhood watches protecting the streets, because Gaddafi’s forces were killing the civilians. They attacked a lot of houses. You would see people running out of the houses barefoot, women and children. Some houses were turned into dust, and some were just damaged.

There is no food, there is no gas, there is no bread, there is nothing. Gaddafi cut off the supplies. The people of Gaddafi are now in control. We go elsewhere to find bread, to find supplies. There is no way for me to communicate with my family. I cannot talk with my family anymore. Me and my friend ran away from Ajdabiya. I didn’t come here directly though. I went to Al Bayda. and then I came to Egypt to finish my treatment.

God bless the brothers in Tobrouk, and our brothers, the Egyptians. They did what they could, they served us.

Note: all of these are Ibrahim Nasr Hamid’s words in translation, but they are edited for clarity. 

Interviews from Libyans entering the Egyptian border..

Wow. I expected this part of the revolution tour to be fairly unremarkable, but this is where I saw the most unrest— London.

On my way home on Saturday night I had a 14 hour, overnight layover in London. That is way too much time to be in an airport, so I took the tube into the city. I had no idea that the biggest demonstration since 2003 was planned for earlier that day. When I got off the subway I saw tons of abandoned posters and signs. 

Then I started seeing smashed windows and anarchist slogans. Luxury shops and banks vandalized. 

I kept wandering, and came across a huge line of police cars in front of the Tory London HQ. There were easily 300 activists engulfing the streets in front of the building. Police were shoving them back and they were chanting “We’re not violent, why are YOU!” and “Shame on you!” They had soundsystems, noise makers, instruments, signs. I’ve never seen a protest like this in the U.S. They shut the square down.

I later read that the protests were because the government just proposed drastic cuts to social services and is not holding corporate tax evaders responsible. You can check out the BBC’s story on it. See the rest of my photos here.  

Heba and I were catching up on life, walking downtown Wednesday night when two army tanks suddenly raced up Talat Harb Street. Confused, we looked around and saw a crowd of about 50 people- almost all men- standing in front of the Misr Insurance headquarters. Misr Insurance is the largest insurance company in Egypt and the Middle East apparently. Heba explained that the owner of the company is a former crony of Hosni Mubarak’s, and people want him to retire. 

“WE WON’T LEAVE UNTIL HE LEAVES,” they chanted. The protest was still going on when we walked past again an hour later.