Libyan rebel medics learn fast on bloody front line

Two corpses, spilled intestines and severed limbs; medic Osama Jazwi is no longer fazed by his daily routine on the front line of fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

"Yesterday we also had a rocket attack, burns, broken bones, shrapnel wounds," said 33-year-old anaesthesiologist Jazwi on Saturday, in a tiny rural clinic which has become the first stop for rebels wounded after fighting Gaddafi warplanes and tanks.

After basic emergency assistance at the clinic in Brega, some 780km (480 miles) east of the capital Tripoli, patients are sent to bigger medical facilities further into the rebel-held eastern territory.

Rebel medics have faced a steep learning curve since protests against Gaddafi's rule started in mid-February, with volunteers, including many young medical students, suddenly having to handle bodies torn apart by shelling and air strikes.

"I'm only a dentistry student, but I'm doing my best. The difficulty is the wounds, I'm just not used to it. I've seen a head in pieces," said fresh-faced Ahmed al-Dersi, 18, after borrowing a reporter's satellite telephone to call his mother.

Mobile network coverage is patchy on the front line in rebel-held east Libya, where Dersi, wearing scrubs, waited by his ambulance under a fierce desert sun. Nerves were frayed as rebels and medics scanned the sky for a warplane overhead.

The vehicle had to be moved several times that afternoon to try to avoid air strikes by Gaddafi's aircraft, bombs landing only a few hundred metres away each time.

The poorly equipped and youthful rebel medics have no radios, making avoiding danger difficult.

Complicating matters are inexperienced rebel fighters who take cover around ambulances and bring their weapons into hospitals, attracting enemy fire, said Ezedin Bousedra, a 34-year-old surgeon.

"On Thursday, a driver and three paramedics were killed when a missile hit their ambulance. Another group was captured by Gaddafi's forces, logistically it's hard for us to mobilise properly," said Bousedra.

Bousedra had been at the hospital in Ras Lanuf further west, but had to evacuate after the oil town fell to Gaddafi forces, their mortar bombs landing within the hospital grounds, he said.

His new workplace in Brega is more of a family clinic, its pharmacy stacked high with aspirin and other medicines for minor ailments, not the supplies needed for major trauma.

The clinic has no shortage of volunteers, however, and people flooded in to do everything from cook to wash bloody floors. Some had come from abroad, including an Egyptian surgeon, a Libyan plastic surgeon living in South Africa and another two Libyan medics from the United States and Ireland.

Accurate figures on the dead and the wounded are difficult to determine given patients are spread throughout hospitals in east Libya, communications are difficult and no one seems to be collating the numbers centrally.

Volunteers with no medical experience have been trained to identify and treat minor wounds, Bousedra said, leaving him free to do more heavy duty work such as amputations. His jeans and green medical apron were splotched with blood stains.

"The magnitude of the injuries has been difficult to adjust to. One guy had half his brains falling out of the back of his head," he said.

In the back of the clinic, a few volunteers sat glued to the television, watching for the latest developments as Gaddafi forces pushed rebels east.

Brega, on Libya's main east-west coastal highway, is likely to be the next town in their sights.

Bousedra said the clinic would evacuate if Brega fell.

On the road outside, there was a blackout to avoid air strikes, leaving only moonlight. Rebel fighters trained their eyes on the road west in the darkness, watching and waiting.