It is little more than a white, air-conditioned tent set up in the car park of Hekma hospital in Misrata. But it is the point where they all arrive.
The first you hear from inside the tent, the cries of “Allahu akbar” at the screaming sirens of the ambulances.
Every few minutes they arrive today, and I have to say, sometimes there were several ambulances within a single minute. Sometimes it isn’t even an ambulance but a Toyota flatbed van – frankly, it’s anything at hand that can be driven to a hospital.
The lucky ones sometimes stagger out, smiling, and holding up a fist which may have some fingers missing, but they are alive and shouting back “Allahu akbar!” Others may be patched up on stretchers, but conscious that they have a mere flesh wound or broken bones, and from them too a rather weaker “Allahu akbar” and perhaps a victory “v” sign.
Other cargoes are not so favourable – very often resembling a mangled mess of blood-stained clothing, flesh and internal organs as the dead are conveyed – and sometimes men still alive, though it ismpossible to imagine how.
Inside the triage tent, there is frantic activity around one bed. Murfta Omar Duwiyra is fighting for his life. Or rather the medics are. On all his tiny body, there is no sign of blood, save for a small red mark in his back and near his left nipple.
Murfta is 5 years old – a sniper’s round has passed through his body, piercing the left side of his heart.
For 42 minutes, 4 young male doctors take it in turns to massage that tiny chest. They all have different pulmonary techniques. But the machines are not responding. The torch flash into little Murfta’s eyes gives no response.
It is exhausting and nerve-wracking for the entire medical team. And it’s pretty clear to me they do everything they can for this little lad. Portable screens, machinery, drips, injections and probes, but it comes down to human hands, elbows, and calculated brute force.
But it was not enough. Murfta died.
There is scarcely time for his little body to be shrouded and wheeled out before a 23-year-old fighter is wheeled in, horribly burned, fractured and ripped apart by a shell burst.
That is just one bed. There are eight or so in this tent. And they fill every time there is the cry of “Allahu akbar”.
“It is”, says one exhausted doctor, “definitely the worst day we have had in weeks.”
All around us the men with the buckets, mops and water sluice out the blood from the floor and the stretch of beds, before they go straight back in to receive another damaged human body.