Scores of hands thrust out from the imploring mob as men surged forward, brandishing passports from a dozen nations.
The crew of the Victory, a fishing boat, and rebel fighters rest on the quay at Ghasr Ahmad in Misurata after their perilous journey across the Gulf of Sirte Photo: GEOFF PUGH
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Canadian Sea King helicopter from a Nato warship tried to force the fishing boat to turn back Photo: GEOFF PUGH
By Ben Farmer, Misurata 8:57PM BST 11 Apr 2011
They have been cut off from the world for nearly two months and now pleaded to use telephones, to pass on messages and to get word of their desperate predicament to relatives or governments.
The pitiful throng was among 7,000 foreigners that rebels estimate to be trapped in the besieged Libyan town of Misurata. The tenuously-held rebel town is the only western possession of the opposition to Col Muammar Gaddafi. It has seen the bloodiest fighting of anywhere in the Libyan uprising.
The labourers from countries including Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana and Niger were attracted by jobs in a once-prosperous town, but have now seen loyalist barrages and snipers turn it into an indiscriminate killing ground.
"Tell our governments about us, please! They have abandoned us!", said Kusi Thomas, a 26-year-old Ghanaian mason who had been trapped since the city cast off 42 years of Col Gaddafi's rule.
Misurata has come to define more than anywhere else the defiance of the rebel civilians who took up arms against their murderous dictator.
Cut off from the revolution's eastern strongholds, it has been surrounded and at war since the uprising began in mid-February.
Col Gaddafi has resorted to rocket bombardments and placing snipers on the rooftops of the main thoroughfare to try and bring the town to heel.
Doctors in its hospitals estimate at least 600 have died so far in the 50-day struggle and 3,000 have been wounded. Four-fifths of them were civilians rather than rebels, and hundreds more are missing, they claim.
But nearly two months on, a town known mainly for commerce somehow remains free. Graffiti in the rebel capital of Benghazi, way to the west, now acclaims the "heroes of Misurata".
The town is around 400 miles behind the frontline stalemate in eastern Libya where rebels are trying to defend the town of Ajdabiya. Residents and labourers alike are trapped unless they can gain passage out on a handful of visiting aid and hospital ships.
As they wait for help, not knowing where it may come from, the migrant workers have pitched tents and makeshift shelters outside the Libyan Oil and Steel Company in the port district of Ghasr Ahmad.
"The situation is very, very bad," said Mr Thomas. "The food situation is bad, the water situations is bad. We have called our embassy in Tripoli to come to our aid, but they have refused."
Labourers said there were 650 trapped workers from Ghana, 750 from Chad and 2,000 from Niger. One man tried to pass on neatly handwritten sheets of names that he said represented hundreds of Sudanese.
Just hours before a salvo of rockets had landed a few hundreds yards from their camp. Col Gaddafi loyalists on the edge of the town had been trying to destroy a rebel-held fuel depot.
The rebels' only supply of weapons, food and medicines comes from a fragile lifeline of small craft willing to make the 250-mile voyage across the Gulf of Sirte from Benghazi. The Daily Telegraph was able to reach Misurata on one such vessel, an aged 70ft wooden fishing boat, which took a cargo of food and rebel soldiers across heavy seas in a 48-hour journey.
The Egyptian-built Victory was one of only around a dozen craft which had made the supply-run since the uprising began, rebel officials said.
The Victory's owner had hand-picked a volunteer crew for the voyage, including a marine pilot, a sponge diver and an officer in the Benghazi coastguard.
More than a dozen fighters completed the cargo, alongside crates of medical supplies, onions, tomatoes and bottled water.
Captain Hamid Hammad, chief of Benghazi coastguard, said: "The situation in Misurata is of course very bad, but the rebels are still fighting. They are brave men and they have held out for 50 days.
"Misurata is the main gate between Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi is trying to keep it, to keep his grip on the West. We want to help Misurata to stand up. We are trying to break the siege."
As well as the risk of being hit by fire from government artillery, the boats must also run a gauntlet of Nato warships which have turned back vessels laden with arms. Just two hours outside Misurata the Victory was stopped by a Canadian Sea King helicopter which hovered before the boat and signalled for it to head back. Refusing to turn back, the crew and fighters lined the decks, frenziedly waving and holding aloft crates of medical supplies, while the captain tried to hail the pilot and pleaded to let him proceed. After half an hour in which the rebels feared their mission was over, they were eventually allowed on.
However, approaching Misurata after nightfall, the danger was not over. The captain had been unable to give the town's defenders notice of the Victory's arrival and as he quietly edged the darkened craft into the harbour mouth, the quaysides erupted in gunfire.
Crewmen flung themselves onto the deck as bullets thudded into the Victory's sides. Two minutes of tense shouting persuaded the rebels that the boat was not part of a surprise seaborne assault.
The medical supplies bought by the Victory were unloaded and transferred the next day to Misurata's overstretched hospitals, which have been flooded with wounded. Dr Mohamed Ahmed Eifagieh, an Edinburgh-trained cancer specialist, said his own clinic had offered no emergency surgery before the uprising, but had since operated on 400 wounded and seen 50 fatalities a week. He added: "The price of our freedom is very high. But we will pay it."
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