- Smoke rises above buildings in Tripoli early on Tuesday after numerous heavy explosions, reportedly from NATO airstrikes, were heard in the Libyan capital. Louafi Larbi/Reuters
Smoke wafts over the city, including from an area close to the Gadhafi compound
msnbc.com news services 5/23/2011
TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO warplanes bombarded targets in Tripoli with more than 20 airstrikes early Tuesday, striking around Moammar Gadhafi’s residential compound in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the Western alliance launched its air campaign against his forces.
(Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fUxVgxj0vc to hear specialist discuss how war against Libya has long been planned. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeSjEOY2fd8&feature=share to see video of extensive protests in Libya against bombing and in support of Libyan leader Gadhafi.)
The rapid string of strikes, all within less than half an hour, set off thunderous booms that rattled windows, sent heavy, acrid-smelling plumes of smoke over the city, including from an area close to Gadhafi’s sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound.
Libya bombing May 23
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said at least three people were killed and dozens wounded in NATO strikes that targeted what he described as buildings used by volunteer units of the Libyan army.
NATO said in a statement that a number of the strikes hit a vehicle storage facility adjacent to Bab al-Aziziya that has been used in supplying regime forces “conducting attacks on civilians.” It was not immediately clear if the facility was the only target hit in the barrage. Bab al-Aziziya, which includes a number of military facilities, has been pounded repeatedly by NATO strikes.
Libyans protest NATO bombing
The military aircraft whooshed low over the city during the night, the strikes coming in series of three loud booms, a pause of minutes punctuated by the hissing sound of low-flying jets, then more shaking, shuddering strikes, shaking windows miles away from Bab al-Aziziya. The sound of other more distant explosions could also be heard.
Pro-Gadhafi loyalists beeped their car horns and fired guns, shouting their support for the Libyan leader. Armed men sprayed the night sky with gunfire in response. Men screamed and shouted outside the hotel where journalists were staying, declaring their loyalty to Gadhafi.
Baby injured by NATO in Libya
Observers described the bombing as the heaviest attack on the Libyan capital since NATO began its air campaign on March 19 after the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution to protect civilians after Gadhafi responded to the public uprising against his rule by unleashing his military and his militias.
In one room of the Tripoli Central Hospital, the bodies of three mangled men in their twenties lay on stretchers, their clothing ripped and their faces partially blown away and dusty. A nurse, Ahmad Shara, told reporters taken on a government-escorted visit to the facility soon after the strikes that the men were standing outside their homes when they were killed, presumably by shrapnel.
May Day protest of U.S./NATO war on Libya, in San Salvador
One man who identified himself as a relative walked into the room where the bodies lay. He halted at their sight, turned around and loudly slapped his hands on a wall as he cried out in shock.
Around 10 other men and women lay on stretchers. They appeared moderately to lightly wounded.
“We thought it was the day of judgment,” said Fathallah Salem, a 45-year-old contractor who rushed his 75-year-old mother to the hospital after she suffered shock. The wide-eyed man described how his home trembled, his mother fainted and how the younger of his seven children cried as they heard the rolling explosions.
Protest in Britain
“You were in the hotel and you were terrified by the shaking — imagine what it was like for the people who live in slums!” Salem said, as he interrupted a government spokesman to speak to a crowd of foreign reporters at the hospital.
“Honestly, we used to have problems (with the regime),” he said in Arabic. “But today we are all Moammar Gadhafi.”
NATO to use attack helicopters
Despite NATO bombing runs, the rebels have not been able to break Gadhafi’s grip on the west of the country, including the capital Tripoli.
NATO attack helicopter
In a significant new deployment of firepower, France and Britain are bringing attack helicopters to use in the strikes in Libya as soon as possible, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said Monday.
The use of attack helicopters would appear to mark a new strategy for NATO, which has relied on strikes by fighter planes and seen that result in a stalemate on the ground as Gadhafi forces adapted, often turning to urban fighting to make such strikes more difficult.
Nimble, low-flying helicopters have much more leeway to pick targets with precision than high-flying jets. But they also are much more vulnerable to ground fire. The alliance has had no military deaths since it first started enforcing a no-fly zone on March 31.
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Longuet said the helicopters would be used to target military equipment such as Libyan tanker and ammunition trucks in crowded urban areas while causing fewer civilian casualties. Longuet said France would essentially use Gazelle helicopters, which have been around for some 40 years, but can also use the Tigre, a modern helicopter gunship.
NATO, which said in its statement that it took care to “minimize the risk of collateral damage to the fullest extent possible,” has been escalating and widening the scope of its strikes over the past weeks, hiking the pressure on Gadhafi, while the alliance’s members have built closer ties with the rebel movement that has control of the eastern half of Libya.
‘Signal’ of US support for rebels
U.S. and Obama behind war on Libya; NATO is a smokescreen
Meanwhile, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in the Middle East was in the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya on Monday — a show of growing support for the loosely formed movement that seeks to oust Gadhafi.
A State Department statement called a visit to Benghazi by Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, “another signal of the U.S.’s support” for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, which it called “a legitimate and credible interlocutor for the Libyan people.”
Several countries, including France and Italy, have recognized the NTC, while the United States, Britain and others have established a diplomatic presence in Benghazi. Germany has also opened an office in Benghazi, the German government said Monday.
Aircraft carrier off Libyan shores
Qatar is the only Arab country that has recognized the rebels, and Gambia is the only nation in Africa to offer recognition.
Libya’s rebels have scrambled to organize their fighters and create a political leadership since the outbreak in mid-February of the uprising that seeks to oust Gadhafi, in power for more than four decades. Rebels now control the populated coastal strip in the country’s east and the western port city of Misrata, which Gadhafi’s forces have besieged for months. They also control pockets in Libya’s western Nafusa mountain range.
During his three-day visit, Feltman will meet with council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil and others. Feltman departs Tuesday. He declined to answer questions by a reporter from The Associated Press Monday.
The visit follows the opening of a European Union office on Sunday by that body’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, who said she looked forward to a better Libya “where Gadhafi will not be in the picture.”
Rebel leaders welcome the diplomatic contact, but say only better weapons will help them defeat Gadhafi.
“It is just not enough to recognize (us) and visit the liberated areas,” spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga told The Associated Press. “We have tried very hard to explain to them that we need the arms, we need funding, to be able to bring this to a successful conclusion at the earliest possible time and with the fewest humanitarian costs possible.”
Rebels now control the populated coastal strip in the country’s east and the western port city of Misrata, which Gadhafi’s forces have besieged for months. They also control pockets in Libya’s western Nafusa mountain range.
Ghoga warned that residents of the Nafusa mountains face a “major humanitarian disaster” because government troops have been cutting supply lines to communities. Rebels say about 225,000 people live in the area.
Col. Jumaa Ibrahim, who defected from Gadhafi’s forces and is now a member of the mountain military council, said two villages, Galaa and Yefren, are facing critical shortages. “There is no water, money or food. They are bombed everyday with launchers, tanks and whatever they can,” Ibrahim said.
Villagers raise goats and sheep and grow apricots and almonds on the plain near their town, he said. Many fear Gadhafi’s troops have destroyed their orchards and stolen or killed their animals.
Gadhafi’s forces fired rockets at the mountain town of Zintan on Monday, damaging houses and the tanker trucks residents use to bring in water, resident Hamid Embayah told the AP via Skype.
No one was injured.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
