Libya: Nato not doing enough to protect Misurata

Libya: Nato not doing enough to protect Misurata

Libyan rebels complained Nato was not doing enough to protect the key city of Misurata from Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces.
By Bruno Waterfield 6:29PM BST 06 Apr 2011

One week after taking over military operations, Nato was accused of mission failure by Libyan rebels who accused Alliance aircraft of doing nothing while Col Gaddafi's artillery kept up a 40-day long artillery bombardment of Misurata.

Abdelfatah Yunis, the commander of rebel forces, accused Nato of "letting the people of Misurata die every day". "If Nato waits one more week, there will be nothing left. Nato has done nothing, they have just bombed here and there."

France, frustrated at Nato's ineffectiveness, yesterday vowed to use its own forces to open up a humanitarian aid corridor between the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the besieged city.

"We are going to ensure that aid comes from Benghazi and that at no moment Gaddafi's military forces will be able to stop this," said Gerard Longuet, the French defence minister.

Nato admitted that its tight "rules of engagement" and a ban on land forces were a barrier to operations.


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"If you're trying to protect human shields when there is a tank with dozens of people around it – innocent civilians – the best thing at that stage is probably not to drop a bomb on that tank," said Rear Admiral Russell Harding, Nato's deputy commander of operations.

"Because we are not allowed forces on the ground, there is a physical limit to what we are able to do in that respect."

Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, warned Nato's inability to deal with Gaddafi's "human shield" tactics of dispersing artillery and tanks in urban areas risked military strikes grinding to a halt.

"We've formally requested that there be no collateral damage for the civilian population. That obviously makes operations more difficult," he said. "There is a risk of getting bogged down."

Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the head of France's armed forces expressed frustration. "I would like things to go faster, but as you are well aware, protecting civilians means not firing anywhere near them. That is precisely the difficulty," he said.

Col. Gaddafi yesterday wrote to Barack Obama "following the withdrawal of America from the crusader colonial alliance against Libya", Libya's official news agency JANA said on Wednesday.