At War: Clues About Qaddafi’s Forces

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

MISURATA, Libya — As the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi fled Misurata’s airport and its environs on Wednesday, they left behind signs of both how they survived and how they fought during their weeks working against the city that expelled them.

One set of clues was evident just outside the airport’s gates. The runway is surrounded by stands of olive and almond trees, and many farms. Near one traffic circle, the Qaddafi soldiers had taken shelter inside an opaque green plastic greenhouse.

From a fast-moving car on the nearby road, and likely from the air, the greenhouse looked innocuous enough. But the trash heaps nearby gave it away — someone had been drinking hundreds of liters of bottled water, and had thrown away many ammunition cans, and then, had ditched uniforms and even military boots.

A stop revealed more. Inside the tent, shielded from view, were a few grubby mattresses and cardboard sheets, where soldiers had been sleeping. Many of their blankets had been left behind, too.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

And at one end of the greenhouse was a large pile of crates telling more of the war and of how Colonel Qaddafi armed his forces for it. The crates had contained 125-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation rounds for the main guns of T-72 tanks.

Rebels and medical officials in Misurata have said the T-72 tanks at the city’s edge had been firing randomly into the city. Sometimes at night, when the wind died down and noise carried, it seemed they could be heard. A distant boom would sound — the report of an outgoing round. And then an explosion would be heard in the city, often very fast — within four or five seconds.

This was faster than artillery and mortar rounds, which fly in a high, looping arc that consumes time. Tank rounds fly in a much flatter trajectory, and can cover many kilometers in four seconds, though not exactly precisely.

And here were scores of a round that were not designed to fire at other tanks, but at bunkers, structures and people.

The official designation of this round is 3VOF36. It contains a projectile with a high-explosive charge surrounded by a steel case. When it detonates, the projectile breaks into hundreds of what its seller calls “anti-personnel fragments”; in other words, flying bits of jagged steel designed to kill.

The stenciling on the crates, and the paperwork within, told of their provenance. They had been exported from Oktyabrsk, Russia, in late 2002 under a 1999 contract between Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms-trading agency, and the Libyan government. Under this contract, the Qaddafi military has bought 8,126 cases — a quantity corroborated by both the paperwork and the stenciling on the crates.

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Who they were intended to be used against no one can say from the evidence available in the tent. But the empty canisters told the rest. They had been used in Misurata, and perhaps for the shelling of the city, by a force that put a greenhouse to a novel new use.

C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.

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