The smell of decaying bodies hangs over the rows of loosely packed sand as the caretaker moves through the cemetery on Ajdabiyah’s southern edge. Embarak Hamid has buried 81 people in recent days. A group of volunteers from the town — working quickly beneath the searing sunlight — have already cleared a new row. By nightfall, they say they will likely fill it with dozens more bodies, as they search the corners of a city laid waste in some places by a government bombardment that lasted for 11 days straight.
In little more than 24 hours, the line of Libyan rebel control has lurched forward yet again, sweeping more than 100 miles to the west, through the towns of Ajdabiyah, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, and along a coastal road of mostly desert sand dunes in between. For 11 days, the pro-rebel town of Ajdabiyah had been under siege, cut off from water and electricity, and subject to seemingly random shelling by the forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But, on Saturday, after a night of allied airstrikes, rebel fighters poured into the city on Saturday and pushed on to the towns further west; parading — as they have before — through a morbid playground of war-ravaged streets and shredded tanks. Meanwhile, men who had stayed behind to fight in Ajdabiyah said their families could now return from the outlying villages to which they had fled. Those pushing forward, promised again to reach Gaddafi’s stronghold of Sert in a matter of days.
