WORLD NEWS_Libya: Gaddafi's office destroyed in attacks on leader's compound

Libya: Gaddafi's office destroyed in attacks on leader's compound

Nato escalated its attacks on targets linked to Col Muammar Gaddafi by destroying his main office building after it came under political pressure to direct its fire at the Libyan leader.

Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent 10:55AM BST 25 Apr 2011
Libyan officials were quick to condemn the air strikes on Col Gaddafi's sprawling Bab al-Azizia compound in southern Tripoli as an attempt to "assassinate" the Libyan leader.

Two explosions, audible over a mile away, were heard from compound shortly after midnight. Residents of the Libyan capital said they were the loudest heard since Nato's air campaign against Col Gaddafi's forces began.

The attack came as 30 civilians were reportedly killed by government shelling in the western city of Misurata, the centre of which was captured by rebel forces over the weekend after weeks of heavy fighting.

The Libyan leader is not thought to have been anywhere near the scene of the blasts, which completely destroyed a small complex of buildings where Col Gaddafi recently hosted delegates from an African Union peace mission.

Libyan officials claimed that 45 people were wounded, 15 of them seriously, in the attack, but did not take western correspondents to see any of the casualties.

"It was an attempt to assassinate Col Gaddafi," one said.

Three state television stations went off air after the attacks, but normal transmission was restored within an hour.

The attacks came after calls by some US politicians over the weekend to target Mr Gaddafi directly.

Such a course of action has been strongly opposed by Russia and some other states, which have argued that "regime change" runs counter to the UN resolution authorising military action in Libya.

Seif al-Islam, one of Mr Gaddafi's sons, said the Nato strikes would not deter the Libyan government in its campaign against the rebels.

"This cowardly attack on Muammar Gaddafi's office may frighten or terrorise children but we will not abandon the battle and we are not afraid," he said.

Another Libyan official said the attack would justify Libyan terrorist action against the cities of Nato members.

Meanwhile, pro-Gaddafi troops forced onto the defensive around Misurata, the only city in western Libya that remains in rebel hands, shelled residential areas with a ferocity that a revolutionary spokesman described as "unprecedented, both in the intensity and the size of the shells".

Rebel forces, bolstered by Nato air support, recaptured the centre of the city over the weekend, driving government troops out of their last strongholds in two high-rise buildings.

US predator drones, deployed for the first time over the Easter weekend, twice fired Hellfire missiles at government positions in the city, while Nato air strikes destroyed a number of tanks, a command-and-control bunker, rocket launchers and storage buildings.

But loyalist forces remain entrenched in the outskirts of the city, from where they launched repeated artillery barrages on central residential districts.

"There is very intense and random shelling on residential areas," Ahmed al-Qadi, an engineer at a dissident radio station in Misurata, told the al-Arabiya television network.

"Burned bodies are being brought into the hospital. The number of the wounded is 60 and there were 30 martyrs. That is the toll for the past 12 hours."