Libyan Families Search for Missing Relatives

In a modest office in a hospital on the outskirts of Ajdabiyah, a small group of volunteers have taken on an immense task.  

With limited resources, they've set up a database of the growing number of people who have disappeared in Libya's civil war.  

They now have 483 cases on file.

[Naji Yousef, Volunteer, Center for Missing Persons]:        

"Their families come to us and say that someone is missing. For example, there is an old man - 70 years of age - and a 12-year-old child, missing. And there are also rebels, who they took from Ajdabiyah, and Brega and Benghazi, who were taken by the dictatorial forces. We just want freedom, nothing more."

The office uses whatever scant clues are available to them, from eyewitness testimony to images of the dead found on the cell phones of captured Gaddafi forces. 

Maryam's husband went missing during the chaos in Ajdabiyah. 

She, her daughter and the rest of the family have now turned to prayers, hoping her husband will come home soon.  

[Maryam, Wife of Missing Man]:            

"I am positive he will come back. I read the Koran, and it puts me at ease, and I have seen visions of his return.  A person's instinct is never wrong. God willing,  if he had died, I would have felt it."  

The growing ranks of the missing is a deepening tragedy throughout the cities and town that have struggled to cast off Gaddafi's rule.  

And these photographs are a cold reminder of war's toll.