Tag: Evening Edition

The head of Britain’s armed forces, meanwhile, said NATO should widen its bombing campaign to ensure Kadhafi is unable to cling to power, while Pope Benedict XVI called for negotiations to end the violence.

Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi, quoted by JANA state news agency, said after meeting Khatib that Libya is keen for “an immediate ceasefire to coincide with a stop to the NATO bombardment and the acceptance of international observers.”

In Paris, senior Libyan rebel leader Mahmud Jibril met President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss the three-month-old conflict and the prospects for a transition.

At least 50 other people were wounded in the NATO attack on the eastern city of Brega that killed 11 imams, or prayer leaders, early on Friday, with five of them in critical condition, government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said.

“I want to say to the Crusader cowards that I live in a place where I cannot be reached or killed; I live in the hearts of millions,” Kadhafi said in an audio message broadcast on state television.

He referred to an early-Thursday strike on his Bab al-Aziziya compound that “led to the martyrdom of three civilians, journalists,” meaning the recording, the authenticity of which could not be verified, was made since then.

The pre-dawn strikes in the capital Tripoli came just hours after Libyan state television showed what it said was footage of Kadhafi meeting tribal leaders, the first new video of him aired since an April 30 air strike that his government termed an attempt on his life.

“Three people died — two of them are journalists and one was their guide who was helping them film a documentary,” government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told a news conference in the Bab al-Aziziya compound that was held next to a large, water-filled crater.

The airport of Libya’s third-largest city, which had been under siege by loyalist forces for almost two months, fell to the rebels after fighting that raged through the night, an AFP correspondent said.

By Wednesday afternoon, insurgent fighters were in full control, as people celebrated the victory in the streets and others set ablaze tanks left behind by Kadhafi troops.

The United Nations, meanwhile, said the offensive launched by Kadhafi’s forces was paralysing the oil-rich nation and causing the population to suffer widespread shortages of essential goods.

Jets screamed in low over the capital in the early hours, carrying out an unusually heavy bombardment that lasted roughly three hours, an AFP correspondent said.

After heavy clashes, the rebels controlled a stretch of coastal road west of Misrata, Libya’s third city which Kadhafi’s forces have laid siege to for more than two months, forcing thousands to flee.

The Red Cross said meanwhile it delivered a shipment of humanitarian aid to the rebel-held western city amid concerns Kadhafi’s forces may have dropped mines into the harbour from helicopters bearing the Red Cross emblem.

Two loud explosions were also heard in Tripoli, where the regime of embattled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has its headquarters, as jets flew overhead, witnesses said.

Italian coast guards and local fisherman, meanwhile, saved all 500 refugees on a boat from Libya.

Forces loyal to the Libyan strongman shelled fuel depots in Misrata and dropped mines in its harbour using helicopters bearing the Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems, the rebels said as they braced for a fresh ground assault.

“It seems that the more desperate Kadhafi gets the more he unleashes his firepower on the people,” said Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the opposition National Transitional Council.

Meanwhile, rebels were bracing for a ground assault by Kadhafi forces on the besieged western port city of Misrata as NATO warplanes struck regime targets further to the west.

The fund, agreed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya on Thursday, is intended to provide an emergency lifeline to the rebels, whose provisional administration has no source of financing to replace receipts from oil exports, which have come to a virtual halt.