It was a massacre, a slaughter, not a battle as the media sympathetic, to the rebels would soon claim.

As the first volley of automatic fire reverberated through the mar-ket, merchants desperately pulled at tin shutters to protect their wares,but their efforts were futile. Rebels fired indiscriminately, then lootedand torched the stalls. Wild-eyed children stood watching, their moth-ers darting in to scoop them up, only to be cut down. Old women,their mouths agape, wailed as their slain families lay scattered andbroken.