Gaddafi Prisoners 'Left To Die In Desert'

Nineteen people suffocated after being caged in metal boxes and left to die in the desert heat by pro-Gaddafi forces, Amnesty International has claimed.

Survivors told how they were forced to drink their own urine and sweat as they watched fellow detainees die in front of them.

Amnesty said 29 people had been imprisoned in two cramped cargo boxes on a construction site in Khoms, 75 miles east of Tripoli.

Only 10 survived.

"This is obviously appalling and inhumane treatment of a group of people who were mostly civilians," said Diana Eltahawy, North Africa researcher at Amnesty.

The charity said its team in the country had examined the containers, which had no windows.

The smaller of them was only two metres by six metres and held 10 people.

The deaths occurred in June, but news of the tragedy has only just emerged as Khoms was previously off-limits to independent reporting.

Survivor Mohamed Ahmed Ali, a schoolteacher, described how armed men arrested him at his home on May 20 after he took part in anti-government protests.

The pro-Gaddafi forces forced him to kneel, before giving him electric shocks and beating his head and back with metal wires.

He was later detained in one of the containers.

"People were falling on the floor all around me. We were screaming: 'We will die in here, let us out'," he told Amnesty.

Abdel Rahman Moftah Ali, 24, was the only survivor of the smaller of the two containers and watched his fellow inmates die in front of him, said Amnesty.

"Foam was coming out of some people's mouths. I saw my cellmates drop to the ground and become motionless one by one," Ali said.

"I think I fell and hit my head. Eventually I regained consciousness... It was a day from hell."

A third survivor, Faraj Omar al Ganin, 27, said that detainees were getting increasingly desperate as the hours went by.

"For hours we were screaming for help. It then became eerily quiet. I realised that I was the only one still conscious. I screamed: 'They have all died'.

"The guards finally opened the doors. They then made me drag the bodies out by their feet."