Abu Salim Hospital Massacre [Masterlist]

Post created August 30, 2011
turned to a masterlist May 17, 2012
last update Aug. 21, 2012

<< The Tripoli Massacres

The original article/content has been removed to a new post )top link below) to make this a masterlist for organizing numerous sub-posts, some still forthcoming. The comments, first several, reflect the old content.

A more appropriate intro later. First, the video to explain visually what this is about:


Then the Report (added Aug. 21, 2012 - the anniversary)
Abu Salim Hospital Massacre: Report

Then the links. Previous Posts:
Original Article, Aug.2011: Abu Salim Trauma "Hospital" - A decent overview - detailed but a bit dated.

Women and Children Dead at Abu Salim Hospital: Not many but any is enough to cause concern.

Video: A Massacre at Abu Salim Trauma Hospital: A good video I made to introduce the issue, plus some related findings.

More Detailed Research (for the report)
Abu Salim Hospital Report: Research: With an eye to a CIWCL report, collected posts to address certain sub-issues.

For those interested, I'm accepting ideas about what needs to go in this report, how it should be organized, phrased, etc. The content and tone are open at the moment as I just start an outline that might work. I've decided to postpone release of the shed massacre report long enough to fully absorb new info and to get this second report started. So long as the first one, and possibly both, are out in time for the one-year anniversaries, I'll consider that a victory.

Anyone want to take a crack at proposing a report outline/approach or even writing a draft section? Or helping gather more links, videos, images, etc.?

Women and Children Dead at Abu Salim Hospital

December 22, 2011
last update Dec. 27

<< The Tripoli Massacres

The Evidence for Women and Children  
Adding to the previous record on the carnage at Abu Salim Trauma Hospital, a CNN news report from Alex Thomson I'd missed before (thanks to Petri Krohn's Abu Salim hospital playlist - his whole channel is amazingly informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VlEdcZ9CMs
Grim Face of War in Libya
Posted by Ikon590 on August 26, 2011

What's unusual here is the dark tone of the report, and the faint suggestion (at 1:25) that rebels might be responsible for what happened at the Hospital. What's altogether new to me is the information at 2:15, about the executed black would-be refugees dumped next to the hospital (covered somewhat here). Previous reports said 19 or 20 bodies were there, all men. This says there were 22 victims, including "two women, two children, but most were men of fighting age."

It's not entirely clear what Thomson's criteria were for saying"children." He could have meant teenager, and actually seen a 20-year-old man who's just a bit small. Even gender cannot always be adduced correctly from decomposing bodies laid in strange postures. But Thomson has more experience than usual judging by his Channel 4 bio,  covering as many war zones as anyone else around. I'll givehim credit here, especially as it's supported.

Andrew Simmons for al Jazeera was the first journalist at the hospital on the 26th. For an interview with National Public Radio, he confirmed women at least were among the dead.

BLOCK: Were these men, women, children, Andrew?

SIMMONS: We could make out men and some women, only a few. We didn't see any children. And we weren't really in a position to be forensic over this.

And The BBC's John Simpson, who called the scene at the hospital "one of the most terrible incidents of the revolution," was among those reporting "more than 200 decomposing bodies" and the BBC report specified that he "found corpses of men, women and children on beds and in the corridors of Abu Salim's hospital," in addition to the ones on that pile outside (or was this a minor error of presumption?).

There are other points of ambiguity with the total number of dead on-site. Was it 75, or "more than 200" at its highest point? Did the number fluctuate, and if so, why? Did anyone else report or even show women and children among these ambiguous dead? Because their killing - often on-site and by the blade - is the real problem, rather than their being left "unattended" afterwards. And one side rife with sword-waving, unaccountable, spoiled-rotten, uncontrolled, Islamo-nihilist slaughter jackals stands out as both culprits and as the nation's new rulers.

What it Means (a Guess)
If women and children were among those executed and abandoned at the hospital, the obvious question is what it means. It doesn't really look like a policy of anyone's to kill the populace indiscriminately. By all evidence, the numbers of kids and women are too low to be the main plan. But something unusual was at work here, putting families in whole at a risk that was too great in at least a few cases.

My best guess builds right off what I've already observed. Near these dead are quite a few blankets, which are often handy enough when dead are concerned, but also pillows and clothing, cardboard boxes and plastic bags. Those planning to flee from rebel "liberation"might carry the former inside the latter, piled in the car. They might go as families, hoping to escape in time. Dozens of cars were left abandoned all over that area, rammed off the road, doors flung open, hoods popped, disabled.

The drivers of these cars of Abu Salim are presumably arrested or dead. Most of the dead we've seen dumped about are adult males, but like anyone else, they had families, and some perhaps had them right there. One man shot near his car (victim #9, graphic photo, listed and placed with others here) wore a wedding ring, and had a baby blanket left nearby. One could presume from this the rebels had a policy of physically sparing women and children as usually done. But they seemed to quite freely execute daddies who tried to flee suspiciously.

It's not too hard to imagine in this climate a few women and older children, the spirited ones, refusing to be parted from their husband/father, refusing to leave their assailants eyes intact, and having to be, unfortunately,"put down" alongside their main target. It's not the only option, nor the best, they'd be aware. But is the quickest. If so, they'd be dumped with the rest, no problem. It's a bad guy thing, so the bad guy "Gaddafi regime" will be blamed. Let those who flee and kill at the same time be blamed as the killers of these attempted refugees and go down as child-killers and women-killers that the humanitarian rebels were always just barely too late to save the country from..

Update December 26:
And an update on investigations into who carried out the slaughter of men, women, and children, inside and around this hospital full of wounded loyalists: Nothing I can find. The only new story in a news search is about 100 surgeons who had a workshop at the trauma hospital in mid-December.

Officially, it seems, loyalist snipers wounding people, a cowardly loyalist staff who ran from those snipers, and simple neglect still explain the gunshot executions, throat-slitting, and beheadings that occurred inside this one among many black holes of "Free Libya's" emerging new history. And anyone there who knows, who escaped, who can see and care, will be scared shitless to say anything about it. At the moment, Tripoli's doctors - those found disloyalist or neutral enough to remain free, alive, and working - are still trying to get guns as banned from their hospitals as cigarettes.

This comes after a hospital worker strike, following months of repeated incidents like this minor battle, and more recently thuggish behavior in broad daylight that hasn't quite been fatal yet, per the BBC's report anyway. The concerned health workers might be among those aware of the staff at Abu Salim's onetime inability to prevent guns and swords being used there, dozens of times over, turning the place into a veritable slaughterhouse, one with even less government oversight or concern than there would be if cattle were killed there.

Video: A Massacre at Abu Salim Trauma Hospital

And Notes on the Parking Lot Victims
October 6, 2011
last edits Dec. 26

Below is the video I just uploaded to my Youtube channel. It's powerful stuff, not light viewing. I also have a playlist to gather the source videos. Reference throughout is is made to my article The Tripoli Massacres: Abu Salim Trauma "Hospital."


Assorted New Observations
A couple of things I hadn't noticed before popped out in the video editing process.

One of the basement bodies, shown in the AFP video, also seems quite likely beheaded, making perhaps two so far known of. Like the other basement victims I can see, aside from an old man, this victims is black. That's judging by his arm and shoulder, but he's got lightened discoloration (severe burns and/or decay?) over his whole front. The angle isn't clear, but his head's either gone or bent way back. And the latter doesn't explain the enormous pool of blood covering half the floor, under the table and chairs and his gurney, with strange yellow stains on the edges.

The red spray execution marks captured so alarmingly well by Youssef Boudlal are visible in the al Jazeera video. Their guide in fact points (proudly?) right to them at 0:26, but the camera doesn't at the moment follow his finger. In my video, these signs of murder are called "footprints" of the "fleeing" medical staff.

The Parking Lot Victims
Aside from the 21 black men killed in the old sick ward, and the several stashed in the basement morgue, another large batch of dark-skinned bodies was seen on the grass outside. These numbered 19 by Andrew Simmons' count for al Jazeera, "dumped, next to piles of rubbish," and 20 by Hadeel al-Shalchi's analysis for AP. The latter said they were "in the hospital's courtyard next to the parking lot — all of them darker skinned than most Libyans, covered with blankets." As far as I can tell that's so. Their clothing is indeterminate to my eye, and gender and age are not generally clear either. There aren't any decent resolution close-up images I've seen but for one (linked below). But all bodies I can identify as such are adult-sized, and one seems to have been very tall.

The 20 parking lot victims: screen grab from the Telegraph's video

The one wrapped in a green blanket (either covered or moved, and not visible in the photo above), is dark-skinned but long-haired, and not exactly black African by his face. Decay might be partly responsible for the color seen, but he might be some sort of dark Indian person. Al Jazeera's camera saw his left arm hanging out intact on the 26th, but by the time another photo was taken, it was pulled around and skeletonized from sleeve to wristband. Clearly this is predation, probably by a stray dog, sometime between the 26th and the final clean-up of this mess.

These bodies are generally not so much "next to rubbish" or "covered in blankets" as described, but rather laid helter-skelter amid clothing, bedding, plastic garbage bags, and emptied cardboard boxes. All these are things people trying to flee might carry, along with other items their assailants likely kept.

They can easily be imagined packing all this into a family car hoping to make it out by some uncontrolled back-road before the rebels took control of their area. Some wouldn't be quick enough. The rebels don't seem to like those who flee instead of cheering their arrival, especially if they're black. It would all look highly suspect to their bearded little minds, and they tend to shoot suspicious things.

Indeed, all over the blighted area, photographs and videos capture the ubiquitous and mysterious abandoned cars of Abu Salim - doors thrown open, trunks emptied, tires often slashed and hoods popped open, raided for parts or just made useless. The passengers are obviously long-gone to who knows where. It seems quite likely the 20 bodies with their bedding had first been such would-be refugees found by the rebel conquerors in some of these cars.

Rebels and their supporters have many stories of Gaddafi's soldiers and loyalists in civilian clothes mugging "normal," rebellion-supporting people, robbing them, stealing their cars to escape in, and so on. In addition to the man and boy whose claimed injuries "prove" the same snipers who caused the carnage at the hospital, another of the tacked-on seeming Arab patients was described as such a "normal" Libyan mugged and robbed by Gaddafi men.

One video posted by Inominex shows streets lined with dozens of abandoned vehicles like this, including a marked rebel truck ("55"), perhaps left after trading up. It's filmed from a car driving through the neighborhood on about August 25 or 26, and captures one white little car (I don't know my cars, but it and its license plate are visible at 0:21) with two pillows laying behind it. These partially cover other things, including green fabric (a Libyan flag?) and a large pool of blood. I zoomed in, brightened and increased the color a little bit in the image below. The droplets on the side clarify this is red fluid, not thin red fabric of some kind. Who was killed there and for whatcrime besides having a green flag packed in the trunk? Was the victim's body one of those dumped at the hospital down the street?

All this ties in, perhaps, with a witness Simmons spoke with for al Jazeera on the 26th. Abdul Salam Turshi said he saw armed men stopping cars on the "highway," opening the doors and "just killing people for nothing." It originally sounded vague as to just who the "armed" men were - perhaps government soldiers - and who they were killing. But he said armed men, not soldiers, didn't he? He showed his face and gave his full name. This man needs to be checked after to ensure he hasn't been silenced for simply telling the media what he saw during the "liberation"of Tripoli. Even without details, it meshes with the many dead, dark bodies found all over just as the rebel forces arrived.

Update Dec. 26: CNN at least reported among these dumped bodies, 22 in number, were "two woemn, two children." That aspectof the hospital massacre now has a dedicated post. Also, another, much more informative image of these victims, uncredited:

At least two men in military fatigues. Some have very advanced decay,others not so much. The one at least at upper left doesn't look very black, but otherwise the reported patterm holdspretty well. At least 13 victims are visible here, none of them obviously women or children.