20110410
reuters

DEHIBA, Tunisia (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces are shelling homes, poisoning wells and threatening to rape women in a remote mountain region, out of sight of the outside world, said people who fled the area.

The violence in the Western Mountains region, a sparsely-populated area reached only by winding roads, has received little of the international attention given to attacks on cities on the coast such as Misrata and Ajdabiyah.

But residents who escaped the region in the past three days, loading suitcases and mattresses onto their cars and driving across the border into Tunisia, said they were subject to a campaign of terror.

They now want their story to be heard.

"The bombardment ... is targeting homes, hospitals, schools," said Mohamed Ouan, from the town of Kalaa, who arrived at Tunisia's Dehiba border crossing with about 500 other Libyans from the Western Mountains.

"No one is interested in this region, which is suffering in silence," he told Reuters late on Saturday.

Another man from the same town, Hedi Ben Ayed, said: "Just imagine, there is no life left there. Gaddafi's forces used petrol to burn the drinking water wells so we would go thirsty ... Believe me, his forces have even killed the sheep."

"You shouldn't ask questions about the number of dead," he said. "The last victims were a whole family which was killed on Friday by indiscriminate bombardments."