Gadhafi to 'blow up' Tripoli if rebels seize it

“The Libyan premier told me, if the rebels seize the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up,” Kremlin envoy Mikhail Margelov said in an interview with Izvestia daily. Margelov met Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi last month.

“I imagine that the Gadhafi regime does have such a suicidal plan,” he added, saying that Gadhafi still had plentiful supplies of missiles and ammunition. But Margelov, who has had rare access to senior Libyan officials, questioned reports that Gadhafi could be running out of arms in the drawn-out conflict. Gadhafi had still not used a single surface-to-surface missile, he argued.

“Tripoli theoretically could lack ammunition for tanks, cartridges for rifles. But the colonel has got plenty of missiles and explosives.”