Gaddafi’s soldiers using women and children as human shields

Summary of story from Daily Mail.April 26, 2011

The soldiers of Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi are using women and children as human shields to protect them from attacks in the Libyan city of Misrata, it has emerged.

This new gruesome twist in tactics came after NATO bombers targeted Gaddafi himself, destroying buildings around his seat of power in the capital, Tripoli, and destroying part of his Bab al Aziziyah compound.

One rebel – Absa Salam – told reporters, “Gaddafi’s men were taunting us and laughing as they disappeared with our women and children.

“There was nothing we could do. We knew, and they knew, that we’d kill our own people if we tried to kill them. These people are barbarians – devils.”

With 10,000 already dead as a result of the country’s seven week civil war, Gaddafi is also now surrounding his compound with human shields – civilians – who he claims would rather die than see him killed.

Human rights groups are reporting children as young as eight being raped by Gaddafi’s troops, and other children witnessing the murder of entire families, so his men are now ditching their uniforms to make them indistinguishable from the rebels.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday that Britain and its allies must prepare for a long haul in Libya as weeks of air strikes show little sign of unseating the dictator, but insisted that there were “grounds for optimism”.