The two men are singing in the back of a pick-up truck, sitting on the rails, their legs resting on a blanket that seems oddly lumpy. Sticking out from beneath it are two pairs of feet, one bare, one wearing socks. They are the feet of two pro-Gaddafi fighters killed in the fighting in the coastal city of Sirte.
Thursday was a day of deaths on both sides. Government forces trying to enter the last pocket of Sirte held by pro-Gaddafi fighters were bogged down in a narrow street flooded with sewage and water.
Sirte is an unremarkable town, its importance inflated by the fact that the deposed Libyan leader was born nearby and counts its main tribe among his staunchest supporters.
But its fate is now being keenly watched around the world. The rebel government in Tripoli has declared – as UK foreign secretary William Hague told MPs in London – that its fall will mean the liberation of the entire country and trigger the start of a political process to build a new democracy.
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