Residents Say NATO's Air Strikes Killed 85 People, Including 33 Children, 32 Women and 20 Men
NATO'S Massacre at Majer, Libya
By FRANKLIN LAMB
Majer, Libya.
Located about 20 miles east of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, six miles south of Zliten, and off Libya's southern coast across the Mediterranean from Rome, Majer was a picturesque village known for the fine quality of its dates and is claimed by locals to produce the best tarbuni (date juice) in Libya.
Family members, eyewitnesses and Libyan government officials claim that NATO's air-strikes at Majer killed 85 people, including 33 children, 32 women and 20 men. Reporters and visitors were shown 30 of the bodies in a local morgue, including a mother and two children. Officials and residents explained that approximately 50 bodies were taken to other locations for family burial and most of the injured rushed to hospitals at Tripoli.
At Majer, NATO chose to bomb three neighboring compounds and visitors examined a total of five bombed-out houses. There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but rather mattresses, clothes and books littered the area. One badly injured 15-year old young lady, Salwa Ageil Al Jaoud, had earlier written her name inside one notebook found amidst the rubble. She was later visited in hospital and attested, like the witnesses at Qana had, that there was no military presence in the homes that were bombed.
NATO used the same tactic that Israel used during the two Qana massacres. After the first three bombs dropped at around 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Monday, August 8, many residents of the area ran to the bombed houses to try to save their loved ones. NATO then instantly struck with more bombs slaughtering 85 Libyans.
The badly burned and mangled bodies of two boys named Adil Moayed Gafes and Aynan Gafees were pulled from the rubble by family members deeply in shock. One anguished gentleman repeated the words, There is no God but Allah, and a martyr is loved by Allah," and soon others joined in.
Standing on a pile of rubble, Libyan government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, declared, "This is a crime beyond imagination. Everything about this place is civilian!"
According to Libyan officials interviewed at the Rixos Hotel here in Tripoli last night, NATO attacked Majer "to try to help rebel fighters enter the government-held city from the south as it deepens its involvement and military command and control of one side in what has become a civil war hoping for billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts and special oil deals from its chosen team set up in eastern Libya."
Seemingly borrowing a page from the Israeli army media office, NATO's Carmen Romero, the NATO Deputy Spokesperson and Colonel Roland Lavoie, Operation ''Unified Protector'' military spokesperson on 8/9/11 told a joint Brussels-Naples news conference that "the village bombed contained a military assembly area and that NATO to date had no evidence of any civilian casualties but that NATO always takes extraordinary measures to assure the safety of civilians."
It is predictable, that as the evidence of the massacre at Majer becomes public and NATO is pressed to explain the killing of yet more Libya civilians, NATO, probably within the next 48 hours, will announce "an internal investigation" into the events at Majer while asserting in advance, as the Israelis regularly do, that their bombing was only directed at "legitimate military targets."
Every Muslim and Christian Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, and every Lebanese citizen whose family members or loved ones were slaughtered during Israel's two massacres at Qana, Lebanon, is reminded today of the indescribable loss suffered yesterday by their Libyan sisters and brothers at Majer, Libya.
The Majer massacre was perpetrated
yet again with American weapons once more gifted by American taxpayers without
their knowledge or consent and against every American humanitarian value shared
by all people of good will.
As at Qana, the inventory of American weapons that has been provided to NATO
and available for use here in Libya since March 29, 2011, sometimes
indiscriminately, in order "to protect civilians" includes, but if
not limited to, the following:
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