Libya crisis: Gaddafi using schoolboy conscripts on front line

Col Muammar Gaddafi is using schoolboy conscripts as young as 15 in his battle to regain the besieged town of Misurata according to young government troops captured by rebels.

The teenagers are told they are going on training exercises until they reach the front lines, when they are given rifles and told by officers they will be shot if they retreat or desert.

Two badly-wounded teenage fighters shown to The Daily Telegraph said they were told Misurata had been overrun by drug addicts, Islamic militants and Egyptian invaders.

One said his own side had opened fire on his own teenage detachment when they later fled from the rebels.

In the past week, the conscripts have been thrust into fighting along the strategic "heavy road" connecting the Benghazi to Tripoli highway with the commercial port ten miles away at Ghasr Ahmad.

A handful of fishing boats reaching the port from Libyan Benghazi are the rebels' only link with revolutionaries in the east and Gaddafi's forces are trying to cut the port from central Misurata. (read more)