By Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s crisis researcher
A man holds a remnant tail section from an MAT-120 cluster munition used in Misratah © Private
Here in Misratah, Libya’s third city, we have just experienced four more days of relentless shelling by Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces.
In just two of the residential neighbourhoods I have been able to visit in the past four days – Qasr Ahmad in the east of the city and Zawia al-Mahjoub in the west – hundreds of rockets and mortar shells have rained down, literally all over the place.
I have lost count of how many homes I’ve seen that have been hit in these clearly indiscriminate attacks.
Medical clinics, schools, mosques, factories and the port – where thousands of foreign workers are stranded and waiting to be rescued – are just some of the locations that have come under attack. Fortunately, many of the residents of the houses that took direct hits escaped injury but others were not so lucky. Adults and children alike have been killed and injured in their homes and on the streets by flying shrapnel from these projectiles.