CAPTIVES FREED:A GROUP of journalists and other people trapped inside Tripoli's five-star Rixos hotel have been released unharmed.
The group were freed shortly before 4pm yesterday afternoon in the Libyan capital, according to Matthew Chance, a CNN reporter among those trapped in recent days as fighting raged in the surrounding streets.
Conditions had deteriorated sharply at the hotel, where more than 30 foreign journalists were trapped by armed guards loyal to Gadafy.
In a dispatch filed on Tuesday, Dario Lopez-Mills of the Associated Press wrote that fighting around the hotel had intensified.
“The smell of gunpowder hangs in the thick heat, along with sweat and a little fear. When the shooting is most intense, we take refuge in the hotel’s basement conference rooms.
“Two satellite telephones set up on a balcony were destroyed by gunfire, so we’ve stopped transmitting our material. We wait and worry the gunmen could turn hostile at any moment.
“There is no power and no running water. On Monday, we ate bread and butter. On Tuesday, the cook made french fries. Bottled water is running low. We don’t know when it’s going to end, and we see little of what happens.”
With food and water running low and an increasingly tense atmosphere in the hotel, William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said yesterday morning the situation was being monitored “hour by hour”. The trapped journalists included staff from the BBC, the Sky satellite TV broadcaster, CNN, Reuters and other networks. Other captives reportedly included a former US congressman and a member of the Indian parliament.
“It’s a desperate situation,” the BBC’s Matthew Price told BBC radio. “The situation deteriorated massively overnight when it became clear we were unable to leave the hotel of our own free will. Gunmen were roaming around the corridors. Snipers were on the roof.” A cameraman who tried to leave the compound “had an AK47 pulled on him”.
But, by yesterday afternoon, Chance said the captives had negotiated their release with the guards, who agreed they could leave in small groups. He said they expected the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Chinese embassy to send cars to pick them up, but there was pandemonium in the lobby and the group had to go back upstairs.
Chance said that a group of Arabic-speaking journalists had a “heart to heart” with two of the Gadafy loyalist guards who were then disarmed. There was then a rush to find a flag with the word “TV” written on it to put on the evacuation car, to prevent it becoming a target.
He reported the BBC team left the hotel and Red Cross cars then arrived. Chance said he crammed into a vehicle with journalists from Reuters, Fox News and Associated Press.
"Now pulling out of the Rixos hotel after six days of a complete nightmare," he wrote. "Still a dodgy situation." – ( Guardianservice)