Snipers, cluster bombs panic Libya's Misrata

With fears growing that refugees will attempt a chaotic mass escape by sea from the city of 400,000, UN envoys in Tripoli demanded an end to attacks on Misrata by forces loyal to strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

The International Organisation for Migration warned that the vast numbers wanting to flee Misrata, about 215 kilometres east of Tripoli, was threatening to overwhelm an international sea rescue operation.

The IOM said nearly 1,000 stranded people had been taken out on Monday, but that thousands more were awaiting rescue in increasingly perilous circumstances.

Britain said it will charter ships to get 5,000 people out of Misrata.

A British spokesman at the UN said the plan is being discussed by Britain's International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell during meetings with top United Nations officials in New York.

On the ground in Misrata, Hussein al-Fortia, a headmaster-turned-rebel, said fighting had been "awful" over the past weeks, with Gaddafi's forces attacking from three sides and firing rockets from kilometres away.

The administrator of the main hospital in Misrata, Doctor Khaled Abu Falgha, said in all, 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the fighting that broke out in Misrata nearly six weeks ago, while another 3,000 people have been wounded.

Human Rights Watch quoted doctors as saying more than 267 bodies had been taken to morgues as of 15 April, the majority of them civilians, but that the actual toll was higher because some dead had not been taken in.

Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, denied civilians were being targeted.

NATO is currently enforcing a United Nations-mandated no-fly zone designed to protect civilians, and Western allies have called for the end of Gaddafi's four-decade rule.

Speaking in Budapest, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate ceasefire and a political solution to the conflict, saying the United Nations would open a humanitarian mission in Tripoli.

And in Tripoli, UN special envoy to Libya, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, and chief humanitarian coordinator Valerie Amos, called for an end to attacks on Misrata, in a meeting Sunday with Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmud and Foreign Minister Abdelati Laabidi.

Hospital administrator Abu Falgha said the last week has seen worsened injuries from cluster bombs, requiring many amputations in Misrata.

Cluster bombs, which spray deadly bomblets indiscriminately over a large area, are banned by most countries.

Snipers too are spreading fear, striking people down randomly in the street.

With residents feeling ever more in danger, many want to leave but the only way out is by sea as Gaddafi's forces surround the city.

In Geneva, the IOM said a chartered ferry had evacuated 971 stranded people on Monday, mostly Ghanaians, and was headed for Benghazi, where those deemed physically able would later be taken to the Egyptian border for repatriation.

The arrival of the Greek vessel on Sunday saw hundreds of panicked refugees blocking a key road to the harbour and demanding to be allowed aboard, witnesses said.

Jeremy Haslam, IOM chief in Libya, said the situation was eventually calmed by the rebels manning checkpoints at the port and some of the Libyans being allowed on the ferry.

But he said he was worried the movement could be just the tip of the iceberg of an attempted mass escape by sea by many of Misrata's 400,000 residents.

Such an exodus would overwhelm the evacuation operation mounted by the IOM, the Qatari government and the French group Doctors Without Borders, he warned.

The current plan calls for the IOM and other organisations to take non-Libyan refugees from Misrata – mostly Egyptians, Chadians, Ghanians and people from Niger – to a transit camp in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, where they would be sent to Egypt for repatriation.

Meanwhile, renewed fighting was reported in Nalut, near the border with Tunisia, and in the strategic rebel-held eastern crossroads town of Ajdabiya