From The Wall Street Journal:
MIDDLE EAST NEWS
MARCH 24, 2011.Allies Target Gadhafi's Ground ForcesText By SAM DAGHER in Tripoli, STEPHEN FIDLER in Brussels and NATHAN HODGE in Washington
WSJ's Sam Dagher reports continued allied strikes in Libya have given rebels reprieve and allowed them to move westward and attempt to reclaim territory lost recently.
.The U.S. and its allies markedly escalated their campaign in Libya, pounding tanks and artillery in a battle to keep the Gadhafi regime's forces from controlling two cities pivotal to the rebel movement.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization failed in a second straight day of meetings to decide who would take command of the operation. But NATO members appeared to be converging on an approach that would allow the alliance to police the no-fly zone already effectively in place across the country's populated northern coast.
On Edge in Libya
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.Rebels Fight for Ajdabiya
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Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
![[SB10001424052748704050204576218520310309528]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-NE448_0323li_D_20110323103526.jpg)
A rebel fighter crouched on the road at a checkpoint near Ajdabiya Wednesday.
.
.Having pushed Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces back from the rebels' de facto capital, the eastern city of Benghazi, in the opening salvos of the five-day-old air campaign, the allies unleashed airstrikes to rescue civilians and opposition fighters reportedly running low on food and medicine in Misrata, a western city under regime attack.
The new wave of airstrikes, which started in the early hours, appeared to be a last-ditch effort to keep Libyan troops from penetrating so deeply into key cities that they could mix in with the local populace, out of reach of allied planes and missiles, and inflict what Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes called "a potential massacre."
The allies also seemed intent on helping the opposition win back the eastern town of Ajdabiya, the site of back-and-forth fighting between the government and rebels in recent weeks.
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.Journal Community
..Late Wednesday, airstrikes resumed in the capital, Tripoli. Two massive explosions could be heard almost 45 minutes after the bombing began, though it was unclear what had been hit. Libyan state media said "civilian and military" installations were being targeted in Tajura, east of the capital, and broadcast what it said was live footage from Col. Gadhafi's compound, showing crowds of people chanting and waving flags.
Speaking to a handful of reporters, Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kaim wouldn't comment on whether Col. Gadhafi's compound was bombed, saying instead that a microwave tower in Tajoura and fuel tanks south of Tripoli were hit in the latest strikes. He said the Al-Jufra airbase in the Libyan desert and military installations in Al-Jumeil, west of Tripoli, were also bombed.
Misrata, 125 miles east of Tripoli, was quiet as of early Thursday except for sporadic small arms fire, according to residents reached by phone, who described a long-awaited reprieve. "We are very relieved today compared with other days," said a doctor in the city, Libya's third largest and an important commercial hub.
But a day earlier, residents said fighter jets were heard over the city starting at 1:30 Wednesday morning, with intermittent explosions lasting until about midday. In one instance, they said the sky was lit up and a flame rose briefly from the direction of the airport.
Underscoring the potential limits of aerial intervention, residents and rebels in Misrata described a grim humanitarian situation on the ground.
Misrata rose up against the regime when the first wave of protests swept the country last month. Col. Gadhafi's forces later encircled the city center and tried to isolate it by cutting off water and electricity, preventing food and medicine shipments, and disconnecting the cellphone network. They shelled the center with heavy artillery and made incursions that triggered street battles with rebels.
The violence, including the use of sniper fire by Col. Gadhafi's troops, has resulted in the death of dozens of people, according to two doctors in the city. One said the overall death toll has reached at least 170 since late February. This couldn't be independently confirmed.
Government forces now control one of the city's major arteries and have moved into the sprawling central hospital, according to witnesses. They said government forces have posted snipers on rooftops and tanks in front of the hospital.
A college professor in the city said the loyalist fighters had stepped up sniper attacks and arrests of suspected members of the opposition.
Officials with Libya's water, power and telecommunications authorities all acknowledged that the services have been disrupted in Misrata but blamed rebels and sabotage for it.
"In Ajdabiya to Misrata, our targeting priorities are mechanized forces, artillery…[and] mobile surface-to-air missile sites," Rear Adm. Gerard Hueber, chief of staff for the U.S. task force in the Mediterranean Sea, told reporters by teleconference from the USS Mount Whitney.
Adm. Hueber said aircraft were "interdicting their lines of communications which supply their beans and their bullets, their command and control."
Allied commanders hoped the strikes would produce an outcome similar to that in Benghazi, where Col. Gadhafi's troops were chased off and rebels won time to regroup.
In recent days, the Libyan military has intensified offensives in Misrata and Ajdabiya, targeting civilian areas with artillery, armor and infantry, Adm. Hueber said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the goal of military operations, in addition to taking out Col. Gadhafi's air defenses, was to prevent him from using his military to "slaughter his own people."
"I think we will be assessing this as we go along in terms of when his capabilities to do those things to his people has been eliminated," he said of the Libya campaign on Wednesday. "But I think no one was under any illusions that this would be an operation that would last one week, or two weeks or three weeks."
Disagreement continued to fester among U.S., French, British and other diplomats over who would run the campaign. President Barack Obama has said the U.S., already deeply involved in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, intends to soon shed its leadership role in Libya.
"The president has made clear that the United States is not going to be in the lead in this operation for the longer term, and in fact, for more than a week or so from the beginning of the operation," Mr. Gates said. Airstrikes began Saturday.
At a meeting Wednesday evening, France held out against the other 27 NATO members over the alliance's role. Talks were to continue Thursday.
France, which was the first to send warplanes into action above Libya, wants NATO to take a secondary, mainly technical role, in a command structure of a coalition that would include Arab countries, which aren't NATO members.
Other allies argued that command of the strikes should rest with NATO, which has the most experience in the role. Turkey, which had originally opposed NATO enforcement of a no-fly zone, appeared to shift, insisting the no-fly zone should be a NATO-only operation, diplomats said. Turkey also said it plans to send warships to enforce an arms embargo off the Libyan coast.
Moammar Gadhafi's Libya
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.Middle East Turmoil
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.The 27 NATO allies are worried about the safety of their militaries, diplomats say. At the moment, command isn't unified; French, British, Canadian and other national militaries coordinate separately with the U.S., which is the effective leader of the operation. That is a recipe for mistakes, so-called friendly fire incidents and poor cooperation, diplomats say.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé said an international conference in London next Tuesday, including members of the Arab League and African Union, would discuss the mission's command structure, stressing that the mission was under a United Nations mandate.
The meeting will form a "contact group" of nations to discuss further actions to deal with the crisis, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
The London meeting "will show that the political leadership of the military operation isn't the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it's this contact group," Mr. Juppé said.
NATO talks have become heated over recent days. The French and German ambassadors walked out of a meeting Monday after the positions of their governments were criticized by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary-general. One backer of Mr. Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, said "he's a politician, not a diplomat."
Government officials in Tripoli insisted the situation was calm in Misrata and that they were only confronting a small band of Islamic extremists there.
Col. Gadhafi himself remained defiant, vowing that Western powers engaged in military action in Libya would "end up in the dustbin of history."
—Alessandra Galloni, Marc Champion and Adam Entous contributed to this article.
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.Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
MIDDLE EAST NEWS
MARCH 24, 2011.Allies Target Gadhafi's Ground ForcesText By SAM DAGHER in Tripoli, STEPHEN FIDLER in Brussels and NATHAN HODGE in Washington
WSJ's Sam Dagher reports continued allied strikes in Libya have given rebels reprieve and allowed them to move westward and attempt to reclaim territory lost recently.
.The U.S. and its allies markedly escalated their campaign in Libya, pounding tanks and artillery in a battle to keep the Gadhafi regime's forces from controlling two cities pivotal to the rebel movement.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization failed in a second straight day of meetings to decide who would take command of the operation. But NATO members appeared to be converging on an approach that would allow the alliance to police the no-fly zone already effectively in place across the country's populated northern coast.
On Edge in Libya
Track the latest events in Libya.
View Interactive
.More photos and interactive graphics
.Rebels Fight for Ajdabiya
View Slideshow
Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
A rebel fighter crouched on the road at a checkpoint near Ajdabiya Wednesday.
.
.Having pushed Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces back from the rebels' de facto capital, the eastern city of Benghazi, in the opening salvos of the five-day-old air campaign, the allies unleashed airstrikes to rescue civilians and opposition fighters reportedly running low on food and medicine in Misrata, a western city under regime attack.
The new wave of airstrikes, which started in the early hours, appeared to be a last-ditch effort to keep Libyan troops from penetrating so deeply into key cities that they could mix in with the local populace, out of reach of allied planes and missiles, and inflict what Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes called "a potential massacre."
The allies also seemed intent on helping the opposition win back the eastern town of Ajdabiya, the site of back-and-forth fighting between the government and rebels in recent weeks.
More
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U.S. Prods Egypt for More Time Before Polls
Yemen's President Gets New Powers
Deadly Force Used in Syria to Quell Uprising
In Tripoli, Fear and Despair Mount
Arab Wavering Confounds Mission
Conflict Divides Parties in the U.S.
Opinion: Air Power Could Be Enough
Opinion: The Stability Dilemma
. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the West will be in the 'dustbin of history' as the allies enter day 5 of the No-Fly Zone patrol. Also, WSJ's Peter Landers reports plans to revamp cooling Japanese nuclear plants did not include existing plants.
.Journal Community
..Late Wednesday, airstrikes resumed in the capital, Tripoli. Two massive explosions could be heard almost 45 minutes after the bombing began, though it was unclear what had been hit. Libyan state media said "civilian and military" installations were being targeted in Tajura, east of the capital, and broadcast what it said was live footage from Col. Gadhafi's compound, showing crowds of people chanting and waving flags.
Speaking to a handful of reporters, Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kaim wouldn't comment on whether Col. Gadhafi's compound was bombed, saying instead that a microwave tower in Tajoura and fuel tanks south of Tripoli were hit in the latest strikes. He said the Al-Jufra airbase in the Libyan desert and military installations in Al-Jumeil, west of Tripoli, were also bombed.
Misrata, 125 miles east of Tripoli, was quiet as of early Thursday except for sporadic small arms fire, according to residents reached by phone, who described a long-awaited reprieve. "We are very relieved today compared with other days," said a doctor in the city, Libya's third largest and an important commercial hub.
But a day earlier, residents said fighter jets were heard over the city starting at 1:30 Wednesday morning, with intermittent explosions lasting until about midday. In one instance, they said the sky was lit up and a flame rose briefly from the direction of the airport.
Underscoring the potential limits of aerial intervention, residents and rebels in Misrata described a grim humanitarian situation on the ground.
Misrata rose up against the regime when the first wave of protests swept the country last month. Col. Gadhafi's forces later encircled the city center and tried to isolate it by cutting off water and electricity, preventing food and medicine shipments, and disconnecting the cellphone network. They shelled the center with heavy artillery and made incursions that triggered street battles with rebels.
The violence, including the use of sniper fire by Col. Gadhafi's troops, has resulted in the death of dozens of people, according to two doctors in the city. One said the overall death toll has reached at least 170 since late February. This couldn't be independently confirmed.
Government forces now control one of the city's major arteries and have moved into the sprawling central hospital, according to witnesses. They said government forces have posted snipers on rooftops and tanks in front of the hospital.
A college professor in the city said the loyalist fighters had stepped up sniper attacks and arrests of suspected members of the opposition.
Officials with Libya's water, power and telecommunications authorities all acknowledged that the services have been disrupted in Misrata but blamed rebels and sabotage for it.
"In Ajdabiya to Misrata, our targeting priorities are mechanized forces, artillery…[and] mobile surface-to-air missile sites," Rear Adm. Gerard Hueber, chief of staff for the U.S. task force in the Mediterranean Sea, told reporters by teleconference from the USS Mount Whitney.
Adm. Hueber said aircraft were "interdicting their lines of communications which supply their beans and their bullets, their command and control."
Allied commanders hoped the strikes would produce an outcome similar to that in Benghazi, where Col. Gadhafi's troops were chased off and rebels won time to regroup.
In recent days, the Libyan military has intensified offensives in Misrata and Ajdabiya, targeting civilian areas with artillery, armor and infantry, Adm. Hueber said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the goal of military operations, in addition to taking out Col. Gadhafi's air defenses, was to prevent him from using his military to "slaughter his own people."
"I think we will be assessing this as we go along in terms of when his capabilities to do those things to his people has been eliminated," he said of the Libya campaign on Wednesday. "But I think no one was under any illusions that this would be an operation that would last one week, or two weeks or three weeks."
Disagreement continued to fester among U.S., French, British and other diplomats over who would run the campaign. President Barack Obama has said the U.S., already deeply involved in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, intends to soon shed its leadership role in Libya.
"The president has made clear that the United States is not going to be in the lead in this operation for the longer term, and in fact, for more than a week or so from the beginning of the operation," Mr. Gates said. Airstrikes began Saturday.
At a meeting Wednesday evening, France held out against the other 27 NATO members over the alliance's role. Talks were to continue Thursday.
France, which was the first to send warplanes into action above Libya, wants NATO to take a secondary, mainly technical role, in a command structure of a coalition that would include Arab countries, which aren't NATO members.
Other allies argued that command of the strikes should rest with NATO, which has the most experience in the role. Turkey, which had originally opposed NATO enforcement of a no-fly zone, appeared to shift, insisting the no-fly zone should be a NATO-only operation, diplomats said. Turkey also said it plans to send warships to enforce an arms embargo off the Libyan coast.
Moammar Gadhafi's Libya
See some key dates in Col. Gadhafi's nearly 42-year reign.
View Interactive
.Middle East Turmoil
Track daily events in Middle Eastern countries.
View Interactive
.More photos and interactive graphics
.The 27 NATO allies are worried about the safety of their militaries, diplomats say. At the moment, command isn't unified; French, British, Canadian and other national militaries coordinate separately with the U.S., which is the effective leader of the operation. That is a recipe for mistakes, so-called friendly fire incidents and poor cooperation, diplomats say.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé said an international conference in London next Tuesday, including members of the Arab League and African Union, would discuss the mission's command structure, stressing that the mission was under a United Nations mandate.
The meeting will form a "contact group" of nations to discuss further actions to deal with the crisis, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
The London meeting "will show that the political leadership of the military operation isn't the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it's this contact group," Mr. Juppé said.
NATO talks have become heated over recent days. The French and German ambassadors walked out of a meeting Monday after the positions of their governments were criticized by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary-general. One backer of Mr. Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, said "he's a politician, not a diplomat."
Government officials in Tripoli insisted the situation was calm in Misrata and that they were only confronting a small band of Islamic extremists there.
Col. Gadhafi himself remained defiant, vowing that Western powers engaged in military action in Libya would "end up in the dustbin of history."
—Alessandra Galloni, Marc Champion and Adam Entous contributed to this article.
More
U.S. Prods Egypt for More Time Before Polls
Yemen's President Gets New Powers
.Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
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