• Air strikes in Libya continued for a third night
• Libyan government claims more civilians killed
• Disputes over whether Gaddafi legitimate target
• Fighting continues on the ground
Follow live updates here
The Telegraph says the plane is an F-15E Eagle – like this one. Rob Crilly tweeted that the crew are believed to be safe.
The presumed air strikes occurred around 9.15 GMT after what had been a quiet morning. Chris says the rebels appear to have learned their lesson after the debacle yesterday when they rushed into the town after some air strikes only to flee in chaos when they came under fire from Gaddafi's tanks. He added that the rebels will be more careful now to make sure that Gaddafi's armour and heavy weapons in and around Ajdabiya are destroyed before they try to enter the city.
Chris reports that the fight for Ajdabiya has been going on for 10 days now but that the rebels remain disorganised militarily and that the air strikes have proved utterly decisive; on Saturday Gaddafi's forces were fighting inside Benghazi, now they are defending Ajdabiya, 100 miles from the rebel stronghold. That is very much due to air power.
Here is Chris's vivid account of the rebel debacle yesterday.
The problem is that I think there's a disagreement over definitions essentially. I think the MoD would accept that under international law there is a case for Gaddafi being a legitimate target, but they're not targeting him – they haven't done so far and they're unlikely to, and they won't unless they're explicitly told to by the Foreign Office. I think in some ways it's an argument over semantics, but the fact it's going on is just embarrassing and a huge diversion at a time when they should be concentrating on other things.
The US is "absolutely desperate" to hand over the running of the military action to Nato, Nick says. Nato had been expected to take over on Sunday, but has been unable to find agreement on how to police the no-fly zone.
More shortly.
Ian said it appeared Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya complex, which was hit on Sunday night, had been struck again, but says there "seemed to be less air activity last night than on the previous two nights" in the capital. "Maybe that reflects the international aspect of this crisis, where we're hearing so much about divisions and squabbling about exactly what this war is supposed to be about, and what it's supposed to achieve," Ian said.
Libyan officials have admitted privately – it's not the kind of thing they say in public – that yes, [the military action] has been effective, their air defence system has been demolished. They say – and of course there's no way of checking this – that there have been no flights inside Libya since last Thursday night when the UN security council passed its resolution. They like to portray themselves as being obedient and accepting the writ of the UN, at the same time as complaining that what the UN authorised was the protection of civilians and the complaint in Tripoli is what's happening is going far beyond that.
The agency said foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference Tuesday that China wants an immediate cease-fire and talks to end the violence.
China was one of five countries that abstained from last week's vote on the UN resolution.
"My sense is that - that unless something unusual or unexpected happens, we may see a decline in the frequency of attacks," General Carter Ham, who is leading US forces in the Libyan operation, told reporters in Washington.
• A third successive night of air strikes against targets in Libya took place last night, with heavy anti-aircraft fire and explosions heard in Tripoli. Libyan state television reported that several sites in Tripoli had been subject to new attacks by what it called the "crusader enemy".
Al-Jazeera television said radar installations at two air defence bases in eastern Libya had been hit. However, a French armed forces spokesman said France, which has been involved in strikes in the east, had no planes in the air at the time.
• A breach within Britain's political and military leadership has opened up as David Cameron argued that the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, may be a legitimate target while the chief of the defence staff, Sir David Richards, said he was "absolutely not".
The clash fed concern on the third day of the air assault that the hastily assembled international alliance is struggling to paper over disagreements about its ultimate war aims, the future role of Nato and the legitimacy of the rebel groups.
• Residents in two besieged rebel-held cities in western Libya, Misrata and Zintan, said they had been attacked by Gaddafi's forces, Reuters reported. In Misrata, residents said people had gone out into the streets to try to stop Gaddafi's forces entering the city.
Zintan, near the Tunisian border, faced heavy shelling, two witnesses said, forcing residents to flee to mountain caves. Several houses were destroyed and a mosque minaret destroyed. "New forces were sent today to besiege the city. There are now at least 40 tanks at the foothills of the mountains near Zintan," Abdulrahmane Daw told Reuters by phone from the town.
• The US has showed signs of exasperation with its European partners amid confusion over who will take control of the Libyan operation from America.
Facing questions at home about the US military getting bogged down in a third Muslim country, President Barack Obama said Washington would cede control of the Libyan operation in days, either to a Nato-led command or some Nato-style operation headed by France or Britain.
Blog home
No comments:
Post a Comment