نقاط : 99250
تاريخ الانضمام : 31/12/1969
 |  موضوع: Allies Target Gaddafi’s Ground Forces, but Resistance Continues, Reports Say  الإثنين مارس 21, 2011 7:18 am | |
| TRIPOLI, Libya — After a second night of American and European strikes by air and sea against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, European nations on Monday rejected Libyan claims that civilians had been killed. Pro-Qaddafi forces were reported, meanwhile, to be holding out against the allied campaign to break their hold on the ground while enforcing a no-fly zone. Rebel fighters trying to retake the eastern town of Ajdabiya appeared to have fallen back to a position around 12 miles to the north on the road to Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital. At least eight rebels were killed as they tried to advance toward Ajdabiya on Monday, cut down by tank and missile fire from loyalist troops dug in on the approaches to the town. Rebel fighters showed reporters the bodies of four of them, loaded onto a pickup truck.
There were conflicting reports about whether the allies had attacked loyalist forces in the town. While planes had been heard overhead, there appeared to have been no attack on the pro-Qaddafi forces holding the entrance to Ajdabiya on the coastal highway leading north to Benghazi. Ajdabiya is a strategically important town that has been much fought over, straddling an important highway junction and acting as a chokepoint for forces trying to advance in either direction.
The retreat from Ajdabiya appeared to have thrown the rebels into deep disarray, with one commander at the checkpoint trying to marshal the opposition forces, using a barely functioning megaphone, but few of the fighters heeding his exhortations.
Separately, Reuters reported that forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi were still at large in the western city of Misurata and were using civilians from nearby towns as human shields. But there was no immediate confirmation of that report.
As the assault unfolded late Sunday, an explosion thundered from Colonel Qaddafi’s personal compound in Tripoli, and a column of smoke rose above it, suggesting that the allied forces may have struck either his residence there or the nearby barracks of his personal guards. Journalists taken by the Qaddafi government to visit the site shortly after the blast said they saw a bomb-damaged building that appeared to be an administrative center rather than a military barracks or a Qaddafi residence, although the exact nature of the facility remained obscure. No casualties were reported.
Asked about the explosion, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said in a Washington news conference that the United States was not trying to kill the Libyan leader. “At this particular point I can guarantee that he’s not on a targeting list,” he said, saying that the United States military was working to weaken his military capacity rather than remove him.
In London, the Defense Ministry said on Monday that British Tornado aircraft that had flown 1,500 miles from a base in eastern England overnight aborted their mission at the last minute after “further information came to light that identified a number of civilians within the intended target area. As a result, the decision was taken not to launch weapons. This decision underlines the U.K.’s commitment to the protection of civilians.” The ministry did not identify the specific target, but officials indicated that the Tornados’ sortie was part of an effort, reinforced by cruise missiles fired from a British submarine in the Mediterranean, to strike at air defense systems.
The planes were to have struck their target at around midnight, British time — the early hours of the morning in Libya.
Britain also made clear that it placed no store in a Libyan announcement on Sunday night of a second cease-fire. “We and our international partners are continuing operations in support of the United Nations Security Council resolution” authorizing the attacks, the Defense Ministry said. In an interview on British radio, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the allies would judge Colonel Qaddafi “by his actions not his words.”
“They have to be observing a real cease-fire” before the air and sea attacks would stop, he said.
In Paris, an official said France had no information that civilians had been killed in the air assaults. François Baroin, a government spokesman, told a French television channel that French commanders were not aware of any information relating to civilian deaths.
Rebel forces, battered and routed by loyalist fighters just the day before, began to regroup in the east on Sunday as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles back west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Benghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces on Saturday. There was evidence, too, that the allies were striking more targets in and around Tripoli, the capital. More explosions could be seen or heard near the city center, where an international press corps was kept under tight security constraints. Recurring bursts of antiaircraft guns and a prolonged shower of tracers arced over the capital on Sunday night.
A day after a summit meeting in Paris on Saturday set the military operation in motion, a vital Arab participant in the agreement expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The former chairman of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was calling for an emergency league meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab world, and particularly Libya. | |
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