THE MILITARY STRUGGLE:TRIPOLI – Col Muammar Gadafy's forces attacked two west Libyan towns, killing dozens, yesterday while rebels were pinned down in the east.
In the latest fighting, Gadafy armour shelled the rebel-held western town of Misurata. Casualties included four children killed when their car was hit, residents said, adding that the death toll for Monday alone had reached 40.
Residents painted a grim picture of the situation in Misurata, under siege by Gadafy loyalists for weeks, with tanks in the city centre and doctors operating on people with bullet and shrapnel wounds in hospital corridors.
“The situation here is very bad. Tanks started shelling the town this morning,” a resident called Mohammed said from outside the city’s hospital, adding: “Snipers are taking part in the operation too. A civilian car was destroyed killing four children on board, the oldest is aged 13 years.”
But Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said the army was not conducting offensive operations, only defending itself. Western forces were more interested in helping rebels than protecting civilians, he said, and were determined to assassinate Col Gadafy.
In the first apparent air force loss of the campaign, a US F-15E crashed overnight Monday/Tuesday and its two crew members were rescued, the US military said.
Explosions and anti-aircraft fire have reverberated across Tripoli for three nights and state television reported several attacks by the “crusader enemy”.
Twenty Tomahawk missiles were fired at Libyan targets overnight, the US military said.
A Reuters correspondent taken to a naval facility in east Tripoli by Libyan officials saw four Soviet-made missile-carrier trucks which were destroyed. They were parked inside a building whose roof had collapsed, leaving piles of smouldering rubble.
Rebels in east Libya were stuck just outside Ajdabiyah, making no advance on the strategic town despite three nights of Western air strikes.
Mary Fitzgerald adds: At a press conference in Benghazi, Abed al-Hafeez Ghoga, a leading member of the rebel Libyan National Council, said the situation in Misurata was desperate.
Forty people had been killed there on Monday, he confirmed.
He also claimed that Tripoli was “nothing more than a large prison” after hundreds had been rounded up by the regime.
Mr Ghoga confirmed that a convoy of regime forces apparently en route to Benghazi from Soluk, some 40km south of the city, were targeted in a United States air strike early yesterday morning. – (Reuters)