Car explodes in Libyan rebel capital

Associated Press

BENGHAZI, Libya

A car exploded Wednesday in front of a hotel where foreign diplomats and journalists stay while visiting Benghazi, a rare attack in the Libyan rebels’ de facto capital.

Jalal el-Gallal, a rebel spokesman, said the blast in the parking lot of the Tibesti Hotel in central Benghazi caused no injuries or deaths. The burning car sent plumes of black smoke into the air.

“It’s a cowardly act,” he said, adding that rebels assume it was carried out by supporters of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

The regime, which has suffered a series of diplomatic setbacks in recent weeks, suffered another blow Wednesday when Gadhafi’s oil minister appeared in Rome and confirmed he had defected.

Today, at least three NATO strikes hit targets in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. It was not immediately clear what was targeted.

Opponents of the Gadhafi regime rose up against the Libyan dictator in mid-February and have wrested control of the eastern half of the north African country. The rebels have set up their de facto capital in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, and many Western and Arab diplomats who travel there to meet with rebel leaders stay at the Tibesti Hotel.

The rebels insist Gadhafi must relinquish control of the government and leave the country with his sons.

The explosion, which rebel spokesman Mahmoud Shamman said was caused a hand grenade tossed under a car in the hotel parking lot, was the first blast of this magnitude in Benghazi since NATO started its bombing campaign in mid-March and helped drive government troops from the city’s gates. Despite months of fierce fighting between rebel forces and Gadhafi’s military, Benghazi has been for the most part calm.

President Barack Obama has said that the NATO campaign prevented a massacre of thousands of civilians in Benghazi. Before the airstrikes drove Gadhafi’s forces back from Benghazi’s outskirts, the Libyan leader was threatening to go door to door to root out rebels and their sympathizers in the city of about 1 million.

In Rome, the Libyan oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, said he has defected.

Ghanem said he left the regime two weeks ago and arrived in Rome on Tuesday. The Italian Foreign Ministry refused to comment. Up to now, Libya has insisted that Ghanem was on a business trip.

In Geneva, a report by the U.N. Human Rights Council charged that Gadhafi’s forces have committed war crimes. The 92-page report also found that rebel forces committed “some acts which would constitute war crimes.”