20110527
Reuters
TATAOUINE, Tunisia (Reuters) - Libya's rebel-held town of Zintan came under intense rocket attack overnight from forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, foreign doctors who were working in the town told Reuters.



"There must have been about a hundred (strikes). I wasn't counting, but there were four or five rockets every half an hour or 15 minutes," Anja Wolz of Doctors Without Borders said by telephone.

Wolz said it was a "miracle" no one had been seriously hurt.

"Zintan is emptying, people are leaving," she said.

Another doctor Morten Rostrup said the city centre had been shelled every afternoon over the last few days.

"Several rockets landed just 100 to 200 metres outside the hospital," he told Reuters by telephone.

"Of course it's very difficult to work and unsafe. It's totally unacceptable that Gaddafi's forces are attacking the centre of town where the hospital is."

Rostrup was speaking as he headed towards the Tunisian port of Zarzis, along with others of the five-member Doctors Without Borders team, which was forced to evacuate Zintan.

The team hopes to return to Zintan when possible and Rostrup said it was looking at options for possibly relocating the Zintan hospital.

Doctors Without Borders began working in Zintan in March and said that since April 30 more than 120 wounded had been admitted to the hospital there.

The town, in the Western Mountains region, about 150 km (93 miles) southwest of Tripoli, has come under bombardment for the past several days by pro-Gaddafi forces to the east.

Rostrup said tens of thousands had left the area, but some were still living in caves as they sought shelter from the shelling.