Wednesday, March 23, 2011

TRIPOLI: Moammar Gadhafi’s forces attacked two west Libyan towns Tuesday, killing dozens, while rebels were pinned down in the east and NATO tried to resolve a dispute over who should lead the Western air campaign.
Gadhafi late Tuesday made a public appearance at his Bab Al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli that was the target on Sunday and Monday of a coalition missile strike, saying defiantly, “we will be victors in this historic battle.”
“It is an illegitimate aggression by a bunch of fascists,” he said of the coalition air campaign.

With anti-Gadhafi rebels struggling to capitalize on the ground on the airstrikes against Libyan tanks and air defenses, Western countries had still to decide who would take over command once Washington pulled back in a few days, while Saudi Arabia threw its weight behind the U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya.

In the latest fighting Tuesday, Gadhafi’s tanks shelled the rebel-held western town of Misrata and casualties included four children killed when their car was hit, residents said, adding the death toll for Monday alone had reached at least 40.

Residents painted a grim picture of the situation in Misrata, under siege by Gadhafi loyalists for weeks, with tanks in the city center 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, Mohammad, told Reuters by telephone from outside the city’s hospital.

“Snipers are taking part in the operation too. A civilian car was destroyed killing four children on board, the oldest is aged 13 years,” he added.
But Libya’s deputy foreign minister said the army was not conducting offensive operations, only defending itself. Western forces are more interested in helping rebels than protecting civilians, he said, and are determined to assassinate Gadhafi.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday won British and French support for a NATO role in the air campaign with Washington wanting to cede operational control within days.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said France and the U.S. had agreed on how to use NATO command structures but did not agree any further details.

France and the U.K. have agreed to put together a “political steering body” of foreign ministers of states participating in the coalition and the Arab League which would meet in the next few days and hold regular meetings, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told Parliament.

Juppe said not all members of the military coalition are members of NATO but the coalition would use the military alliance’s planning and intervention capabilities. “This is, therefore, not a NATO operation, even if it must be able to rely on military planning and intervention capacities of the Alliance.”

Separately, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said that he and Obama also agreed that NATO should play a key role in commanding the military campaign in Libya.
NATO members, meeting Tuesday in Brussels, agreed to have the alliance use sea power to enforce a U.N. arms embargo on Libya.

In an Arab boost to the military action, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud expressed strong support for the aims of the U.N. resolution on Libya at a meeting with Cameron in London Tuesday, Cameron’s office said.
Two Qatari fighters and two 17 transport aircraft landed in Crete Tuesday and the U.S. military said the aircraft would be “up and flying” over Libya by the weekend. That will be the first direct outside Arab involvement in the operation.

Four more Qatari aircraft and 24 UAE warplanes were also expected to land in Crete on their way to a forward base in Sicily. Rifts were growing internationally over the U.N. resolution, with Russia saying the U.N. Security Council would discuss Thursday whether Western countries were going beyond the bounds of their authority to intervene to protect civilians.

China and Brazil urged a ceasefire amid fears of civilian casualties and Algeria called for an immediate end to military intervention in Libya, calling the action “disproportionate.”
In the first apparent air force loss of the campaign, a U.S. F-15E crashed in Libya overnight and its two crew members were rescued, the U.S. military said. The crash was likely caused by mechanical failure and not hostile fire, it said.

Libyan rebels rescued the pilot after he ejected from the warplane, which came down near Benghazi, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.
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 U.S. 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 smoldering rubble.
“Yesterday six missiles and one bomb from a warplane hit this facility,” said Captain Fathi al-Rabti, an officer at the facility.

“It was a massive explosion.”

Gadhafi’s forces were trying to seize the western rebel-held town of Zintan near the Tunisian border in an attack using heavy weapons. One resident said 10 people were killed Tuesday. People fled to seek shelter in mountain caves.

Rebels in east Libya were stuck just outside Ajdabiya Tuesday, making no advance on the strategic town despite three nights of Western air strikes on the oil-producing state.

At the front line in the desert scrub about 5 kilometers outside the town, gateway to the rebel-held east, fighters said air strikes were helping to cripple Gadhafi’s heavy armor.
When asked why rebel units had not advanced, Ahmad al-Aroufi, a rebel fighter at the front line, told Reuters: “Gadhafi has tanks and trucks with missiles.”

Commenting on the air campaign to protect civilians in this uprising against Gadhafi’s 41-year rule, Aroufi said: “We don’t depend on anyone but God, not France or America. We started this revolution without them through the sweat of our own brow, and that is how we will finish it.”
But sheltering from tank fire behind sand dunes near Ajdabiya, rebel fighters lack leadership, experience and any clear plan of action.

In Tripoli, Reuters correspondents said some residents, emboldened by a third night of air strikes, dropped their customary praise of Gadhafi and said they wanted him gone.
“My children are afraid but I know it’s changing,” one man said. “This is the end. The government has no control any more.”