Robert Fisk with the first dispatch from Tripoli - a city in the shadow of death

[sasha031]

Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.
Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.
There was little sign of opposition to the Great Leader. Squads of young men with Kalashnikov rifles stood on the side roads next to barricades of upturned chairs and wooden doors. But these were pro-Gaddafi vigilantes – a faint echo of the armed Egyptian "neighbourhood guard" I saw in Cairo a month ago – and had pinned photographs of their leader's infamous Green Book to their checkpoint signs.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-with-the-first-dispatch-from-tripoli--a-city-in-the-shadow-of-death-2223977.html

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. Good to hear more --

from folks on the ground.

[robdogbucky]

2. CNN's Anderson Cooper

interviewed a Mr. Wedemann or something, a reporter that had just made it into Benghazi, greeted by throngs of cheering crowds, celebrating and throwing flowers and candy into his vehicle. He said and looked like from the footage, that he was greeted like a liberator not a reporter. Hmmmmmm.

They were very happy to see him.

This was last night on CNN.