TRIPOLI, Libya — U.S., French and British forces blasted Libyan air defenses and ground forces, drawing intense volleys of tracer and anti-aircraft fire over Tripoli on Sunday on the second day of a military campaign that will severely test Moammar Khadafy’s powers of survival.
Late Sunday, smoke billowed from Khadafy’s massive Bab Al Azizia residential compound shortly after a large explosion. Rounds of anti-aircraft and tracer fire lit up the night.
After focusing on air defenses in the first hours of the campaign, U.S. and coalition forces expanded their strikes to include attacks on Libyan ground forces that threaten civilians or are able to shoot down planes enforcing a no-fly zone, a senior U.S. military official said.
The assault cheered the rebels. They had seized control of large areas of the country as they sought to build on months of discontent across the Arab world but in recent days found themselves retreating in the face of Khadafy’s superior firepower.
Rebel forces began to regroup in the east as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajda biya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Ben ghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces Saturday.
Khadafy declared he was willing to die defending Libya and, in a statement broadcast hours after the attacks began, condemned what he called “flagrant military aggression.” He vowed to strike civilian and military targets in the Mediterranean.
On Sunday morning, Khadafy returned to state television airwaves, vowing, “We will win the battle,” and, “Oil will not be left to the USA, France and Britain.”
“You are transgressors; you are aggressors; you are beasts; you are criminals,” Khadafy said. “Your people are against you. There are demonstrations everywhere in Europe and the U.S. against this aggression on the innocent Libyan people. The people are with us. Even your people are with us.”
A day after a summit meeting in Paris set the military operation in motion, a vital Arab participant in the agreement expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The former chairman of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was calling for an emergency league meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab world, and particularly Libya.
“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” he said, referring to Libyan government claims that allied bombardment had killed dozens of civilians.
Reporters seeking proof of the deaths have been offered none to account for even part of that number. Authorities took journalists to what they described as Tripoli’s seaside “martyrs” cemetery, where they were met with the anger of hundreds of protesters screaming anti-American slogans and chanting boisterously in support of Khadafy.
But the visiting international journalists said they found few of the ordinary characteristics of Middle East funerals. No burial processions were seen. There were no portraits of the martyrs, and no grieving mothers lying beside the tombs of their loved ones.
Instead, journalists were pummeled with contradictory stories about the dead. There were more than two dozen open graves, but only one body was placed in the dry earth, wrapped in a white Islamic shroud and described as a young man named Ramadan Ashegani.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
