Libya notebook

The battle had the busy, obsessive yet irrelevant air of a point-to-point. It was a social event, held outdoors, a good place to see and be seen. The jeunesse dorée of the western Libyan town of Zuwara were out in force. People had come from miles around. Rather than tweed suits and barbours they were wearing battlefield fatigues and clung to machine-guns and rocket-launchers. As artillery rounds and bullets whistled overhead, the Zuwarans made informed comments, ducking when the shooting got too close. Half a mile ahead, street fighting had already claimed some 20 lives and inflicted 300 casualties. Welcome to post-revolutionary Libya.
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We slept overnight in the Dolphin Hotel on the edge of Zuwara, about five miles from the front and converted into a field hospital. From the roof there was a spectacular display of tracer on the near horizon and we went to sleep to the heavy pounding of artillery. The following morning a ceasefire had been called so we drove across the devastated front line, the heavy smell of cordite in the air and ruined houses still smoking.