I’m standing next to the biggest group of fighters I have seen together in this war. We’re on the coastal ring road and a seven-tonne truck is being loaded with boxes of ammunition. In front of me the fighters are singing and chanting as they prepare for the battle of Abu Salim – the last district held by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.
As ever, it is a mixture of civilian cars, Toyota land cruisers and flatbeds modified to take a variety of armoury welded on to them, including anti-aircraft hardware and heavy machine guns.
All the fighters themselves are armed with Kalashnikovs and there’s the occasional recoiled rifle and even one multi-rocket launch system. So they are forming up to travel up from here to the Abu Salim district known to the wider world as the place where the Rixos hotel is, where a number of journalists recently had an enforced stay at the hospitality of the Colonel’s guards.
The morale of these young men cannot be higher. As ever, amongst their number is the usual contingent of student fighters from Manchester, including Mohammad, who is currently taking a break from his studies in mechanical engineering.