NATO bombs Tripoli

Rebels battled Muammar Qadhafi’s forces on a deadlocked front line in eastern Libya, and NATO warplanes struck Tripoli early Tuesday in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks.Overnight, NATO warplanes struck at least four sites in Tripoli, setting off crackling explosions that thundered through the Libyan capital.

One strike hit a building that local residents said was used by a military intelligence agency. Another targeted a government building that officials said was sometimes used by parliament members.It was not immediately clear what the other two strikes hit, but one of them sent plumes of smoke over the city. Libyan officials would not say what that strike hit but the smoke appeared to come from the sprawling compound housing members of Qadhafi’s family. 

Between explosions, an aircraft dropped burning flares. Some residents responded by raking the sky with gunfire and beeping their horns.On the front line, heavy fighting was reported on Monday south of Ajdabiya, a rebel-held town about 150 kms south of Benghazi, the rebel headquarters in the east. 

Hundreds of rebels gathered at a checkpoint outside Ajdabiya on Monday afternoon, when an AP photographer counted about 100 pickup trucks coming back from the front, each carrying four or five fighters and some with mounted submachine guns. 

The rebels, firing their weapons into the air as they shouted and danced, said they had been told that NATO was going to launch airstrikes on Qadhafi’s forces and they had been ordered to withdraw temporarily from the front. 

No overall casualty figures were available. Two ambulances came to the local hospital, and doctors said they carried the bodies of four rebels.The cobbled-together rebel army -- comprised some deserters from Qadhafi’s forces and many civilians -- has been bogged down for weeks in the area around Ajdabiya, unable to move on to the oil town of Brega. The rebels say their weapons cannot reach more than about 20 kms while Qadhafi’s forces can fire rockets and shells up to twice that distance. Brega has an oil terminal and Libya’s second-largest hydrocarbon complex. 

Rebel pleas for heavier arms from abroad have not met any response, although NATO is carrying out airstrikes on regime forces as many countries intensify their call for Qadhafi -- Libya’s autocratic ruler for 42 years -- to leave power.

Courtesy : The Hindu