TRIPOLI, Libya — An airstrike on Moammar Khadafy’s sprawling residential compound early today badly damaged two buildings, including a structure where Khadafy often held meetings, said guards at the complex.
Two large missiles or bombs exploded in the Bab Al-Aziziya compound just after midnight, lightly wounding four people, according to a security guard at the site who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Khadafy’s whereabouts at the time of the attack were unclear.
The blasts badly damaged a multistory building and also damaged a second structure. The second building apparently was used for ceremonial purposes: Sofas, chandeliers and picture frames could be seen amid the rubble.
Last month, a cruise missile blasted an administration building in the same complex.
In Washington on Sunday, three members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said more should be done to drive Khadafy out of power, including targeting his inner circle with airstrikes.
Khadafy “needs to wake up every day wondering, ‘Will this be my last?’ ” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican on the committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
However, in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI offered an Easter prayer for diplomacy to prevail over warfare in Libya.
The attack today came a day after Khadafy’s forces unleashed a barrage of shells and rockets at the rebel-held city of Misrata in an especially bloody weekend, countering Libyan government claims that the army was holding its fire into the western city.
Despite the barrage, which doctors say killed 32 and wounded dozens in two days, rebels said they drove the last pro-government forces from the center of Libya’s third-largest city. Morale among Khadafy’s troops fighting in Misrata has collapsed, with some abandoning their posts, said one captured Libyan soldier.
The battle for Misrata, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths in the past two months, has become the focal point of Libya’s armed rebellion against Khadafy since fighting elsewhere is deadlocked.
Video of Misrata civilians being killed and wounded by Khadafy’s heavy weapons, including Grad rockets and tank shells, have spurred calls for more forceful international intervention to stop the bloodshed in the rebel-held city.
NATO’s mandate from the United Nations is to try to protect civilians in Libya, which is split into a rebel-run east and a western area that remains largely under Khadafy’s control. Although the coalition’s airstrikes have delivered heavy blows to Khadafy’s army, they have not halted attacks on Misrata, a city of 300,000 people besieged by Khadafy loyalists for two months.
Still, in recent days, the rebels’ drive to push Khadafy’s men out of the city center gained momentum.
Late last week, they forced government snipers out of high-rise buildings. On Sunday, rebels took control of the main hospital, the last position of Libyan troops in the center of Misrata, said a city resident, who gave only his first names, Abdel Salam, for fear of reprisals. Throughout the day, government forces fired more than 70 rockets at the city, he said.
“Now Khadafy’s troops are on the outskirts of Misrata, using rocket launchers,” Abdel Salam said.
A Misrata rebel, 37-year-old Lutfi, said there had been 300 to 400 Khadafy fighters in the main hospital and in the surrounding area who were trying to melt into the local population.
“They are trying to run away,” Lutfi said of the soldiers, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “They are pretending to be civilians. They are putting on sportswear.”
Ali Misbah, a captured Libyan soldier who had been wounded in the leg, was held under guard in a tent in the parking lot of the Al Hikmeh Hospital, one of the city’s smaller medical centers.
Misbah, 25, said morale was low among Khadafy’s troops.
“Recently, our spirit has collapsed and the forces that were in front of us escaped and left us alone,” he said.
Misbah said he and his fellow soldiers were told that they were fighting against al-Qaeda militants, not ordinary Libyans who took up arms against Khadafy.
“They misled us,” Misbah said of the government.
A senior Libyan government official has said the military is withdrawing from the fighting in Misrata, ostensibly to give a chance to tribal chiefs in the area to negotiate with the rebels. The official, Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, said the tribal chiefs were ready to send armed supporters to fight the rebels unless they lay down their weapons.
Kaim also said the army has been holding its fire since Friday.
Asked about the continued shelling on Misrata, Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the army was responding to rebel attacks. He insisted that most of Misrata was still under government control.
Rebels on Sunday dismissed government claims that tribes in the area were siding with Khadafy and that troops were redeploying voluntarily.
