Medical supplies are lacking in Benghazi and there are not enough operating rooms to treat people injured in bloody clashes with armed forces, a Libyan protester told the Bulgarian weekly Capital Tuesday.
"We are very short in medical supplies… We have some seriously injured people but don't have emergency rooms to do the operations and (they) are left to die," the 45-year-old man told Capital over the phone from Benghazi.
"In Benghazi we have more than 300 people killed and more than 1,000 injuries," he added, citing hospital officials.
Capital, which gave AFP a recording of the conversation, conducted in English, asked that the man not be named for security reasons.
The weekly obtained the man's phone number through the Facebook page of the Libyan Youth Movement, which has summoned people across Libya to protest against Moamer Kadhafi's regime.
"Last night we just freed Benghazi. There is no presence of the dictatorship," the protester cheered.
But he also recounted how in clashes with the armed forces on Monday night demonstrators were fired upon "with weapons that are used for aircraft and tanks".
"There were a lot of reports that people were cut in half and the medical people just sewed their two parts together to give them to their family in one piece," the man said.
Chanting and announcements on a loudspeaker could be heard on the line from outside the courthouse in Benghazi, where the man said 10,000 people were gathered Tuesday to "pray for the murdered".
Children and women were also in the crowd around him, he added.
Asked whether he feared more bloodshed, he said: "Everybody here in Benghazi is willing to die, we are not afraid."
But he also warned that Kadhafi, who has been in power for 41 years, would not give up power easily.
"He does not want to leave us safe, he just wants to destroy everything before he leaves," the man said, adding that in four days of protests the world had finally learned about Kadhafi's "crimes".
"So there is no way he can run from this, only by killing himself," he said.
The eastern coastal city of Benghazi — long an opposition hotbed to Kadhafi's regime — has been the bloodiest frontline between armed forces and demonstrators in the four-day protests in the north African country.
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