Misrata: Just months after the siege of Misrata, this port city is bustling. Stores are open, water is running and there is steady electricity — a sharp contrast to Libya's recently conquered capital 200km away.
But running through the heart of the city, like a raw wound, is Tripoli Street, once its commercial heart and later its main battleground.
It looks like it was lifted from a documentary about the siege of Stalingrad. Every building on the long, wide street has been marked by war, some with just a spattering of heavy machine gun fire across the facade, others with huge bites torn out by artillery.
The revolutionaries pushed Gaddafi's forces from Misrata in February, just a few weeks into the revolt. But its proximity to the capital meant it quickly felt the full force of a government counter-attack. When Khalid Al Massoudi finally returned to his Tripoli Street home, it looked as if tanks had used it for target practice. The top floor was devastated, and so much of the ground floor was punched through with holes that it looked like Swiss cheese.
"The home was destroyed, so I've just been spending all my money trying to repair it — a little piece at a time," said Al Massoudi, who once ran a store there.
During the siege, his family was trapped in the house for days while he and his brothers were fighting in another neighbourhood.
His mother, Halima, tearfully recounted how 17 people, including their neighbours and children, crammed into a tiny hall for four days while the battle raged around them.
They drank water from the toilet tank and fed infants juice from a tiny store. At one point, a piece of shrapnel tore through Halima's leg.
Three soldiers barged in on the last day of the siege and stripped them of their valuables. Al Massoudi said the city council has promised to rebuild Tripoli Street and the surrounding neighbourhoods. But the money will only come once Libya is completely free.
