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28 March 2024

Gaddafi regime accuses Nato amid Libya 'stalemate'

Published
By AFP

Libya on Monday accused Nato of killing at least seven people in an air raid on a medical clinic in Zliten east of Tripoli, as the top US officer spoke of "stalemate" in Nato's campaign.

"We are, generally, in a stalemate," US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen told a press briefing in Washington billed as his last before retirement.

Mullen said Nato has "dramatically attrited (reduced) his forces" and "additional pressure has been brought," even if Libyan strongman Muamme Gaddafii has not been ousted.

"In the long run, I think it's a strategy that will work... (toward) removal of Kadhafi from power," Mullen said.

Libya's insurgents on Monday accused Kadhafi's forces of shelling the rebel-held city of Misrata, targeting gas and oil facilities and setting them on fire, in a statement received by AFP.

The reported NATO air strike on the small clinic in Zliten occurred between 8:00 and 8:30 am (0600-0630 GMT), a local official told an AFP correspondent on a guided media tour of the western town.

The foreign journalists saw a completely destroyed building with a crescent sign at its entrance and the ground littered with surgical gloves, oxygen bottles, pharmaceuticals and stretchers, but no victims.
In other parts of Zliten the reporters were shown three damaged food storage buildings and another still on fire, which the government minders also blamed on NATO.

Strewn around the site were hundreds of smouldering bags of rice, tomatoes and vegetable oil, as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames. Residents said the strike occurred at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT).

In the same compound, journalists saw a completely destroyed building bearing the name "Agricultural Security."

The minders spoke of other air strikes that caused "civilian casualties" early on Monday, but did not elaborate.

East of Zliten, the reporters toured a deserted neighbourhood and saw damage to a school and a mosque. Heavy artillery and explosions could be heard in the distance, and a local official said this came from a NATO warship.

A rebel statement, meanwhile, appealed for help to put out fires in the coastal enclave of Misrata, Libya's third city, caused by loyalist shelling.

"The loyalist forces shelled strategic regions inside Misrata, hitting gas and oil warehouses," the statement said, adding that speedy assistance was needed to extinguish the fires "threatening civilians."

Zliten lies about 150 kilometres (100 miles) east of Tripoli, Kadhafi's stronghold, and 60 kilometres (35 miles) from rebel-held Misrata.

The tour of Zliten came after rebel forces repulsed a counter-offensive by Kadhafi loyalists southwest of the capital.

Regime troops had attacked the western desert hamlet of Gualish on Sunday and shelled the region before pulling back under rebel rocket fire as NATO warplanes flew overhead, an AFP correspondent reported.

The insurgents, who have been fighting to oust Kadhafi since mid-February, recaptured Gualish this month and are planning to use it as a springboard for a western assault on Tripoli.

They said their campaign to attack the capital from the east has been slowed by efforts to remove an estimated 45,000 landmines from around the oil town of Brega.

"We have no choice. We have to clear the sand of mines," Mohammed Zawawy, a spokesman for the Union of Revolutionary Forces in Ajdabiya, told AFP.

He estimated the number of Kadhafi troops still inside Brega at no more than 1,000.

In Tripoli, Kadhafi's compound came under NATO air attack on Sunday.

"British forces... helped to maintain the pressure on Colonel Kadhafi's regime by bombing a key intelligence building in Tripoli and inflicting further losses on forces massed against the Libyan people at Zliten and Gharyan,"

British military spokesman Nick Pope said.

Tornado and Typhoon warplanes on Sunday struck an engineering academy that has "long been a cover for the regime's nefarious activities," he said in the statement issued in London on Monday.

"Also on Sunday morning, other RAF jets successfully attacked two staging posts near Zliten being used to muster tanks, rocket artillery and ammunition."

NATO said it hit a tank in Zintan, one in nearby Gharyan and another in Tripoli, where it also took out a surface-to-air missile launcher. A military storage facility was also hit in Brega.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim al-Furis, a Libyan diplomat declared persona non grata in Bulgaria, refused to leave the country on Monday and with other staff organised a minor rebellion at the embassy in Sofia, denouncing Kadhafi's

regime.

And in London, British Foreign Secretary William Hague was meeting his French counterpart Alain Juppe, with Libya high on the agenda.