West hits Libyan defenses, Gaddafi vows to fight
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A rebel fighter looks at vehicles belonging to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi burn after an air strike by coalition forces, along a road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah March 20, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
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TRIPOLI |
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Western air strikes pounded Muammar Gaddafi's defenses and allied warplanes patrolled Libyan skies Sunday, lifting the siege of Benghazi and allowing rebels to surge forward and retake lost ground..
The aerial assault stopped in its tracks the advance by Gaddafi's troops into Benghazi and left the burned and shattered remains of his tanks and troop carriers littering the main road outside the rebel stronghold. The charred bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert.
"Gaddafi is like a chicken and the coalition is plucking his feathers so he can't fly. The revolutionaries will slit his neck," said Fathi Bin Saud, a 52-year-old rebel carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, surveying the wreckage.
Gaddafi said the raids amounted to terrorism and vowed to fight to the death. "We will not leave our land and we will liberate it," he said on state television. "We will remain alive and you will all die."
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A Libyan government health official said the death toll from the Western air strikes had risen to 64 Sunday after some of the wounded died. But it was impossible to independently verify the reports as government minders refused to take Western reporters in the capital Tripoli to the site of the bombings.
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"Operations yesterday went very well," the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told NBC. "He (Gaddafi) hasn't had aircraft ... flying the last couple days. So effectively that no-fly zone has been put in place."
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"ODYSSEY DAWN"
French planes fired the first shots Saturday, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles near Benghazi in a United Nations-endorsed intervention to force Gaddafi's troops to cease fire and end attacks on civilians who launched an uprising last month against his 41-year rule.
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France sent an aircraft carrier toward Libya and its planes were over the country again Sunday, defense officials said. Britain said its planes had targeted Libya's air defenses mainly around the capital Tripoli.
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On the main road south from Benghazi, some 14 government tanks, 20 troop carriers, two trucks with multiple rocket launchers and dozens of pick-ups were all destroyed. Some still smoldered. Fourteen bodies lay next to the vehicles, though the scale of the bombardment made identifying bodies difficult as tyres burned and munitions exploded in the flames.
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U.S. and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles overnight against air defenses around the capital Tripoli and the western city of Misrata, which has been besieged by Gaddafi's forces, U.S. military officials said.
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They said U.S. forces and planes were working with Britain, France, Canada and Italy in operation "Odyssey Dawn." Denmark said it had four fighter planes ready to join in Sunday and was awaiting U.S. instructions.
It was the biggest Western military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq began exactly eight years ago.
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Gaddafi said all Libyans had now been armed to defend the country and Western defeat was inevitable. Libya's state news agency said more than a million men and women would be armed.
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China and Russia, which abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote last week endorsing intervention, expressed regret at the military action. China's Foreign Ministry said it hoped the conflict would not lead to a greater loss of civilian life.
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