Allies strike Libya for 2nd night
Western
powers launched a second wave of air strikes on Libya early Monday after
halting the advance of Moammar Gadhafi’s forces on Benghazi and targeting
air defenses to let their planes patrol the skies.
The U.N.-mandated intervention to protect civilians caught up in a
one-month-old revolt against Gadhafi drew criticism from Arab League chief Amr
Moussa, who questioned the need for a heavy bombardment, which he said had
killed many civilians.
But the United States, carrying out the air strikes in a coalition with
Britain, France, Italy and Canada among others, said the campaign was working
and dismissed a cease-fire announcement by the Libyan military on Sunday
evening.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said one of its submarines had again fired
Tomahawk guided missiles on Sunday night as part of a second wave of attacks to
enforce the U.N. resolution.
“We and our international partners are continuing operations in support
of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973,” a ministry
spokesman said.
Italy said it also had warplanes in the air, after U.S. and British warships
and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles on Saturday night and Sunday
morning.
Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff,
told reporters there had been no new Libyan air activity or radar emissions,
but a significant decrease in Libyan air surveillance, since strikes began
Saturday.
Benghazi was not yet free from threat, said Gortney, but Gadhafi’s forces
in the area were in distress and “suffering from isolation and
confusion” after the air assaults.
Late on Sunday night, Libyan officials took Western reporters to
Gadhafi’s compound in Tripoli, a sprawling complex that houses his
private quarters as well as military barracks, anti-aircraft batteries and
other installations, to see what they said was the site of a missile attack two
hours earlier.
“It
was a barbaric bombing,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, showing
pieces of shrapnel that he said came from the missile. “This contradicts
American and Western (statements) ... that it is not their target to attack
this place.”
A Libyan military spokesman announced a new cease-fire on Sunday, saying that
“the Libyan armed forces ... have issued a command to all military units
to safeguard an immediate ceasefire from 9 p.m. this evening.”
Both before and after he spoke, heavy anti-aircraft gunfire boomed above
central Tripoli.
Outside Benghazi, smoldering, shattered tanks and troop carriers from what had
been Gadhafi’s advancing forces littered the main road. The charred
bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert.
But with Gadhafi having vowed to fight to the death, there were fears his
troops might try to force their way into cities, seeking shelter from air
attacks among the civilian population.
In central Benghazi, sporadic explosions and heavy exchanges of gunfire could
be heard in the streets late on Sunday evening. A Reuters witness said the
firing lasted about 40 minutes.
In Misrata, the last rebel-held city in western Libya, government tanks moved
in after a base used by Gadhafi’s forces outside was hit by air strikes
on Saturday, residents said.
“There is fighting between the rebels and Gadhafi’s forces. Their
tanks are in the center of Misrata ... There are so many casualties we cannot
count them,” Abdelbasset, a spokesman for the rebels in Misrata, told
Reuters on Sunday afternoon.
A Libyan government health official said 64 people had been killed by Western
bombardment on Saturday and Sunday morning, but it was impossible to
independently verify the report.
Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it
called victims of the “colonial enemy.” Ten bodies were wrapped in
white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly,
the television said.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the
group’s 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report on the
bombardment, which he said had “led to the deaths and injuries of many
Libyan civilians.
“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly
zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment
of more civilians,” Egypt’s state news agency quoted him as saying.
There was no immediate public backing for his call from any government in the
region, however.
Arab support for a no-fly zone provided crucial underpinning for the passage of
a U.N. Security Council resolution last week that paved the way for Western
action to stop Gadhafi killing civilians as he fights an uprising against his
41-year rule.
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah, while Vice
President Joe Biden phoned leaders in Algeria and Kuwait to shore up Arab
support.
The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion
of Iraq. Withdrawal of Arab support would make it much harder to pursue what
some defense analysts say could in any case be a difficult, open-ended campaign
with an uncertain outcome.
The
Source: The Korea Herald