This is Dominic Pace-Welbeck… live from Ball Street, Paceville:
Timeline 2100 hours, Monday September 28:
As I file this report from the front line in Paceville, the town is comparatively quiet; after what has been described as a rather tame weekend. This ‘tame’ weekend recorded no fewer than 18 stabbings, 27 muggings, 12 bazooka ambushes, nine chloroform attacks, 14 nightclub stormings, 19 Molotov cocktail strikes, 16 IED (improvised explosive device) incidents, 13 assaults by a lethal bouncer and four outbreaks of handbag battering.
A spokesperson from Mater Dei Accident and Emergency was quoted as saying: “This was a below average weekend, as far as the war in Paceville is concerned… nobody actually died… yet.”
I write this despatch while crouching in a temporary foxhole at the Dragonara end of Ball Street, while over my head fly assorted missiles and lethal projectiles. The combatants haven’t yet got round to assaulting one another with barrel bombs, but various incendiary devices have left much of Paceville a smouldering wasteland.
Earlier, during a lull in the skirmishes, I did manage to speak to some of the rapidly dwindling number of residents of this den of mayhem and destruction.
Masking my nose and mouth against the overwhelming stench of warm pee, I asked long-time inhabitant, 87-year-old Ms Gladys Staunton-Busuttil, how the constant anarchic pandemonium had affected her.
She replied: “We’re sort of used to it. But it does mean that when I go to the shops I always take my AK 47 with me. I have also electrified my front gate, but it doesn’t seem to have worked… the combatants still manage to use it as a urinal. But at my age, I don’t want to become a refugee and embark on the long, arduous journey to seek asylum in Germany, the UK or Sweden. I’ll just have to sit it out here and hope for the best.”
Another long-term resident, 57-year-old George Vergini Pandolfino, was less resigned to accepting the situation. He told me: “I’m still in favour of retaliation. We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated or, God forbid, murdered in our own homes by these maniacs. If necessary I will defend my home with my last drop of Heineken.” Brave words.
Various incendiary devices have left much of Paceville a smouldering wasteland
That is the sort of resolve that has made our country the great place it is still trying to be.
From where I am cowering it is not easy to get a handle on the accurate geography of the main battlefield. The Libyan irregulars are allegedly located in the burnt-out shell of what was the ‘Chaps’ gay bar, leather emporium and tea rooms, next door to Ranji’s, the former Indian restaurant. They are said to be well armed and determined.
The Eritrean faction are holed-up in what’s left of the former Francine’s Night Club, topless bar and estate agency. They are said to be armed with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) light arms and a few sophisticated heavy artillery pieces.
In fact, it is one of the last mentioned that is thought to have been responsible for the destruction of Gelli’s, the poolside ice-cream parlour at the nearby Hilton Hotel.
Then finally, the itinerant faction known as the Bormla Bombardiers are understood to be based in the fire-gutted shell of the Botulismo Palace Hotel.
They are reported to be armed with sticks, stones and other bone-breaking armaments. But what they lack in sophisticated firepower, they make up for in determination. They are said to make frequent sorties under the cover of darkness with small arms fire and showers of fragmented concrete.
Obviously the police have long since deserted these blighted streets. This is no place for an unarmed civilian force. And the army are long gone, in the face of superior itinerant guerrilla tactics. Indeed, anarchy reigns on the streets of this sad square kilometre that was once the entertainment capital of the Maltese islands.
This is Dominic Pace-Welbeck… Paceville, Malta.