NATO destroys 30% Gadaffi military

Apr 05, 2011

WESTERN powers have destroyed nearly a third of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s military power since launching a military campaign against him last month, NATO officials said yesterday.

By AGENCIES

WESTERN powers have destroyed nearly a third of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s military power since launching a military campaign against him last month, NATO officials said yesterday.

“The assessment is that we have taken out 30 percent of the military capacity of Gaddafi,” Brig. General Mark van Uhm, a senior NATO staff officer, told a news briefing in Brussels.

The area around the Libyan city of Misrata, the only major town in western Libya where a revolt that began seven weeks ago has not been crushed, was the number one priority of NATO air strikes for now, they said.

NATO took command of operations in Libya from a coalition led by the US, UK and France on March 31 and is enforcing a no-fly zone ordered by the United Nations and launching air strikes on government forces to shield civilians.

Over the last day, air strikes around Misrata hit Gaddafi’s tanks, air defence systems and other armoured vehicles, he said. NATO-led air power is holding a balance in Libya, preventing government forces from overrunning the seven-week old revolt, but unable for now to hand the rebels outright victory.

Near Brega in the east, where intense fighting continued yesterday, NATO aircraft struck a rocket launcher, as well as ammunition stores in other areas, he said.

Gadaffi’s forces pushed back rebels from the oil refinery town of Brega on the central Mediterranean coast despite a NATO air strike on loyalists who launched an intensive artillery barrage at their fleeing foes.

But by afternoon, the rebels were seen pulling back in hundreds of vehicles in the direction of Ajdabiya, a transport hub about 80km (50 miles) towards their stronghold of Benghazi.

Yesterday’s thrust by the loyalists appeared to mark the first real movement in the ground battle since last Thursday, when the two sides hunkered down around Brega after Gadaffi’s forces sent the rebels stampeding out of a string of vital oil terminals.


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