Gaddafi forces shell Libyan city
Government troops pound western city of Misurata after a third night of air
strikes on Tripoli by coalition warplanes.
Last Modified: 22 Mar 2011 11:30
The opposition remains defiant, saying it would not negotiate with Gaddafi to
end the violence [Al Jazeera]
Forces loyal to longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have shelled Misurata,
pressing their siege of the embattled western city.
Four children were killed in the shelling on Tuesday, a resident named Mohammed
Ahmed told the Reuters news agency. The children were killed while trying to
flee their home, a rebel spokesman told Al Jazeera.
Gaddafi's regime has encircled Misurata for days, bringing in tanks and
stationing snipers on rooftops, in an attempt to choke off one of the only
cities in the west where a strong rebel presence remains. Shelling there killed
at least 40 people on Monday, Ahmed said.
Misurata lies around 200km east of Tripoli, the capital, and is home to a major
oil refinery.
Libyan government spokesman Ibrahim said Misurata, Libya's third-largest city,
was "liberated three days ago" and that Gaddafi's forces were hunting
"terrorist elements".
But a spokesman for opposition fighters in the city told the AFP news agency
that the opposition remained in control despite an onslaught by Gaddafi
loyalists, who he said opened fire with tanks and set snipers on roofs to gun
down people in the streets.
"Casualties fell in their dozens," after snipers and a tank "fired on
demonstrators", the spokesman said.
The opposition spokesman said Gaddafi's troops "have taken up position along
the main road where they have deployed three tanks, as well as positioning
snipers on rooftops".
Meanwhile, a US F-15 jet crashed in Libya late on Monday, reportedly due to a
technical fault during a raid against anti-aircraft defences.
The US Africa command said on Tuesday that both its crew ejected safely. A
command spokeswoman told AFP news agency that the crash was not a result of
hostile action and an investigation to determine the cause
of the malfunction was underway.
Fierce fighting
There was also fierce fighting further east in Ajdabiya. Opposition fighters
were seen retreating in the face of an attack by government forces.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from an area close to Ajdabiya, said there
had been clashes outside the city.
"There's been heavy fighting and heavy shelling going on ... the rebels told me
there have been heavy casualties and there are a number of corpses between here
and the town [of Ajdabiya] that they have been unable to reach."
He said the road between the eastern city of Benghazi and Ajdabiya was littered
with the "burned-out wreckage of what was Gaddafi''s armour and tanks,"
destroyed in air raids by coalition forces.
Government troops retreated 100km from Benghazi, the opposition stronghold,
after fierce strafing by coalition aircraft destroyed much of their armour, the
AFP news agency reported.
Meanwhile, around 106km south of Tripoli, Libyan pro-democracy fighters forced
government troops to withdraw from the outskirts of Zintan, breaking a siege of
the town.
After enduring heavy shelling the day before, rebels on Tuesday pushed
pro-Gaddafi troops out of the eastern outskirts of the city, a Swiss
journalist, Gaetan Vannay, told Al Jazeera.
Gaddafi's forces withdrew around 10km east, to a village that is still
controlled by Gaddafi, he said.
During their push, rebels managed to capture four regime tanks, Vannay said.
The international military coalition that is enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya
did not aid the rebels by launching air strikes against Gaddafi's forces.
Calls for ceasefire
Meanwhile, international criticism of the coalition enforcing the no-fly zone
has grown, with India joining China in publicly calling for an end to the
strikes that have crippled Libya's air defences, destroyed regime forces on the
ground and given rebels room to recover after nearly losing Benghazi, their
stronghold in the east.
Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that the
government opposed "the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian
casualties and more humanitarian disasters". China had already called for a
ceasefire.
S M Krishna, the Indian foreign minister, called for a "cessation of armed
conflict". His office had already issued a statement on Monday expressing
"regret" for the military intervention.
Pranab Mukherjee, the country's foreign minister, said in a speech to
parliament that "no external powers" should interfere in Libya.
"Nobody, not a couple of countries, can take that decision to change a
particular regime," he said.
China and India were among five countries that abstained from the UN Security
Council vote that approved Resolution 1973 authorising the no-fly zone and
military intervention.
Turkey, which is not on the Security Council but is a key member of NATO, the
Western military alliance, warned on Tuesday that it could not agree to NATO
taking over the enforcement of the no-fly zone if their mission went "outside
the framework" of the UN decision.
The calls for ceasefire came after coalition warplanes hit targets across
Tripoli for a third night and anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky. Two large
explosions could be heard about 10 minutes apart shortly after 9pm, said Al
Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from the capital.
She said two naval installations just outside the city, one of them thought to
be the Abu Sitr Naval Base, had reportedly been hit in the strikes.
"We could see an area of the port on fire, substantially on fire, two big
blazes. We saw fire engines racing along the coastal road," she said.
"This evening seems to have been about targeting seaborne military assets of
Gaddafi's army, but also we are given to understand [there was] an attack on
the airport at Sirte."
'Military aggression'
As fighting raged in Misurata, international coalition forces reportedly struck
radar installations at two air defence bases belonging to Gaddafi's forces in
Benghazi in eastern Libya.
The developments came as the UN Security Council rejected a Libyan request for
an emergency meeting to halt what it called "military aggression" by coalition
forces three days after they began launching strikes aimed at disabling Libyan
air defences.
The council decided instead to hold a briefing already planned for Thursday to
give a briefing on the coalition air campaign to Ban Ki-moon, the UN
secretary-general.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
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