Terrified, the people clamour for guns as Gaddafi jets bomb town

Poised: a Libyan army soldier loyal to Gaddafi, whose picture can be seen in the background, stands guard in Qasr Banashir, south-east of capital Tripoli

It was just after 3.30pm when the people of Adjabiya learned that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi still had the power to hurt them. The knowledge came with the roar of a jet engine, the explosion of bombs and the sight of billowing smoke rising into the clear blue sky.

Ahmed Bulifa had spent yesterday delivering water and food to the units of militiamen manning the emergency checkpoints ringing the city. He was leaving one group to the south of the town when the Libyan air force fighter jet flew overhead at only 2,000 feet.

Its target was a nearby army base that was one of the Gaddafi regime's largest weapon depots. In it is a bunker filled with machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition, the weapons that the revolutionaries know are essential if they are to succeed in defeating his well-equipped forces.

"It came in very low and then suddenly climbed straight up into the sky," Mr Bulifa said of the aircraft. "That was when it dropped the bombs. The sound of them exploding was very loud and there was black smoke. Lots of black smoke." Adjabiya, on the front line of the revolution, is east of Surte, the city where Gaddafi was born and where many of his most fanatical supporters have retreated as swathes of the country have been ripped from his tyrannical control.

Everyone in Adjabiya knows that if the ebb and flow of the revolutionary uprising starts to turn against them theirs will be one of the first places to suffer retribution.

Throwing out the regime's forces had not been as bloody as in many other Libyan cities. With Surte just a short distance away up a modern dual carriageway, only three people died before the security police and fanatical pro-Gaddafi army units fled for safety.

Since then, however, everybody in the city has been frightened about when they might return. Already reports had reached them of pro-government forces ringing the neighbouring city of Ras Lanuf, establishing camps in the desert outside and not letting out any of the revolutionaries.

Then, shortly before the bombing raid came, they heard of Gaddafi forces launching attacks to try to recapture Zawiyah and Misurata. As news of the bombing spread many in Adjabiya suspected a land attack would now be launched against them too.

Idris Kadiki had just left home to attend afternoon prayers when he heard the explosions. He raced back to his house where his heavily pregnant wife had been resting. "She was very upset and frightened and I worried about the baby," he said. "I tried to comfort her but in the end the only way I could was to tell her she was wrong. There was no bomb. Everything was safe."

He knew that was not true. In the city's main square hundreds of people had gathered chanting anti-Gaddafi slogans and promising defiance. Some had guns that they fired repeatedly into the air. Like wildfire, the belief spread that pro-Gaddafi troops were only a short distance away.

At the military base by the arms depot the local militiamen tried to establish what had happened. Hamid Rahel, a businessman who had been placed in command of the revolutionaries assigned to the spot, said that he had been informed that the jet dropped three bombs.

One destroyed a wall, another exploded harmlessly in the desert. The third was dropped 18 miles farther north at the region's main water treatment plant It supplies clean water not only to Adjabiya but also Benghazi, the sprawling eastern city that has become the de facto capital of the liberated east. The bomb missed. Mr Rahel despatched patrols in civilian pick-up trucks into the countryside to determine if land forces were coming. They came back reporting nothing could be seen.

That was not enough to reassure the crowd in the centre of town. Hundreds of people climbed into vehicles to go to the arms depot to demand more weapons to defend themselves. A senior official explained that the weapons had to be rationed as there were not enough for everyone. The militiamen fired their AK-47s over people's heads. When this did not deter the crowd they resorted to rocket-propelled grenades.

"The problem is that after so many years under Gaddafi people find it difficult to believe that he can be weak," said Omar Mohammed, a trader in Benghazi who had come to Adjabiya to visit his cousin.

"In their heads they know he is facing defeat but in their hearts they still fear him. They believe he can still come and punish them for what they have done." Back at the city's main square, a throng of people was still demonstrating. They chanted slogans of defiance, calling on Gaddafi's men to come to the city so they could be once again defeated.

Among them was 16-year-old Damus Abdeljalil. "If they come, I will fight," he said. "But in the last few days I have seen a new future. A better future. One in which we can live life in freedom. It is in God's hands what happens to me but I do not want to have to die. There is too much to live for."

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