JOIN USNato strike kills 5 Libyan rebels
Wounded rebels being brought to the hospital in Ajdabiyah in rebel-held east Libya said their position was hit by an airstrike on Thursday outside the contested port.
“It was a Nato airstrike on us. We were near our vehicles near Brega,” wounded fighter Younes Jumaa said.
Nurse Mohamed Ali said at least five rebels were dead.
The rebels have been fighting to wrest control of Brega from forces loyal to Gadhafi for a week in a see-saw battle along the Mediterranean coast. Bloodstained stretchers were brought out of the hospital in Ajdabiyah, gateway to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in the east. Rebel spokesmen also told Reuters that Gadhafi forces killed five people and wounded 25 in an artillery bombardment of the isolated western city of Misrata on Wednesday.
The barrage forced the temporary closing of Misrata’s port, a vital lifeline for supplies to besieged civilians, the spokesmen said.
Oil production
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about deteriorating conditions for civilians in Misrata and Zintan in the west, and Brega in the east.
He said the situation in Misrata was particularly grave and called for an immediate end to all attacks against civilians.
The civil war has cut oil output in the major supplier by 80 per cent, a senior government official said on Thursday, as rebels and Gadhafi’s forces traded charges over who had attacked oil fields vital to both sides. Rebels say government attacks on three different installations in the east have halted production of the oil they need to finance the eight-week uprising against Gadhafi.
But government Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said the British airforce had damaged an oil pipeline in a strike against the Sarir oilfield that killed three guards.
There was little information on the fighting near Brega on Thursday with journalists kept back in Ajdabiyah, but at least five transporters carrying rocket launchers headed west up the road from the town.
A French minister said Nato airstrikes in Libya risked getting “bogged down” and a top US official warned US lawmakers that Libyan agents could be inside the United States and might try to launch retaliatory attacks. “We want to make certain that we’ve identified these individuals to ensure no harm comes from them, knowing they may well have been associated with the Gadhafi regime,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said.
Gadhafi himself appealed for a halt in the air campaign in a rambling three-page letter to US President Barack Obama bluntly dismissed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday.
“Mr Gaddafi knows what he must do,” Clinton told a news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, reiterating calls for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of his forces from cities they have stormed and his departure from Libya.