Col Muammar Gaddafi's Tripoli compound was targeted by coalition air strikes on Wednesday night as a senior British commander said the Libyan air force had been destroyed.
A naval military facility damaged by coalition air strikes in eastern Tripoli on Tuesday Photo: REUTERS
By Victoria Ward, Alex Spillius and Nick Squires aboard the USS Kearsarg 11:43PM GMT 23 Mar 2011
Five loud blasts were reported at Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound, where he had made an address on Tuesday night and which had been first attacked on Sunday night.
There were eight further large explosions heard in the east of the capital and at a military base in Tajura, 20 miles to the east of the city.
State television reported “a large number of civilians” had been killed.
In the eastern city of Misurata, rebels have been besieged by Gaddafi’s forces for weeks, but said allied air strikes had offered much-needed respite.
RAF Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell disclosed that allied forces had all but wiped out the Libyan air force and were attacking ground troops wherever they threatened the civilian population. “We are now applying sustained and unrelenting pressure on the Libyan armed forces,” he said, during a visit to the RAF base at Gioia del Colle in southern Italy. “Effectively, their air force no longer exists as a fighting force and their integrated air defence system and command and control networks are severely degraded to the point that we can operate with near impunity across Libya.”
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