About three dozen foreign journalists based at the five-star Rixos hotel in Tripoli have been trapped by heavy fighting in the surrounding streets as rebels advance on the capital.
"No one has left the hotel today," said Missy Ryan, a correspondent for Reuters. "We all want to go downtown to report on what's happening but it's not safe." Snipers were positioned outside the hotel, she added.
The hotel is close to the Gaddafi regime's sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound, which is likely to see the last stand of loyalist fighters in the coming days and reportedly the scene of heavy fighting.
Gunfire and explosions were heard from the direction of the compound by journalists at the hotel. The Associated Press reported that trucks loaded with anti-aircraft machine guns were outside the Rixos and loyalist snipers were posted behind trees in the area.
"The mood [among the journalists] is fine," said Ryan. "But it was pretty stressful for a while yesterday when there was a lot of fighting around the hotel. Things are calmer today."
The media corps held a meeting to consider their options as fighting erupted in the capital. For months, many have feared they could be held by the regime as human shields if rebels reached the capital. The only exit route from Tripoli by land, the road to the Tunisian border, has been cut off by rebel fighters for more than a week.
"I wouldn't say we're hostages, but nobody's going out," said Ryan. The hotel entrance was still being guarded by Gaddafi forces and volunteers, she said, but the officials based at the Rixos had left over the past 24 hours. "At first, a few government minders stuck around, all suddenly armed. Some were very angry so we tried to avoid any confrontation. But even those guys have now disappeared."
Moussa Ibrahim, the regime's British-educated official spokesman, gave a press conference on Sunday, in which he appealed for a ceasefire and said Nato was destroying Libya – a mantra he has repeated almost daily for six months. He has not been seen at the hotel today.
The BBC's Matthew Price described a sequence of departures in the past few days. "First there were the children and the wives of Col Muammar Gaddafi's officials packing and leaving the five-star Rixos hotel," he wrote. "Now the relatives of senior officials were going, heading presumably somewhere safer. Then I noticed the translators we have been working with for months now had also left. So too the state television staff who have worked out of here since their headquarters were bombed by Nato."
Journalists have been kept under virtual house arrest by the Gaddafi regime over the past six months, only permitted to leave the hotel in the company of official minders and translators.
Many regime figures lived in expansive suites, sometimes with their families, at the hotel. Others frequented the restaurant and coffee shop in the evenings, dispensing pro-Gaddafi propaganda to captive journalists.
Ibrahim was resident throughout the crisis, sharing a suite with his German wife and baby. The family regularly dined from the restaurant buffet alongside reporters and television crews.
Regime officials organised frequent nocturnal visits to the site of Nato bombings, waking journalists via a public announcement system embedded in every room. Most trips featured a staged demonstration by Gaddafi loyalists.
Armed guards at the entrance to the hotel compound were ordered to stop journalists slipping out unaccompanied but were not always successful. Journalists who had suspected their computers had been hacked discovered printouts of their personal emails in an office used by officials.
