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Snipers, tanks terrorize city
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Libyans pose with the wreckage of a US F15 fighter jet, after it crashed in an open field in the village of Bu Mariem, east of Benghazi, eastern Libya, Tuesday, March 22, 2011, with both crew ejecting safely. The U.S. Africa Command said both crew members were safe after what was believed to be a mechanical failure of the Air Force F-15. The aircraft, based out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, was flying out of Italy's Aviano Air Base in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Libyans inspect the wreckage of a US F15 fighter jet after it crashed in an open field in the village of Bu Mariem, east of Benghazi, eastern Libya, Tuesday, March 22, 2011, with both crew ejecting safely. The U.S. Africa Command said both crew members were safe after what was believed to be a mechanical failure of the Air Force F-15. The aircraft, based out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, was flying out of Italy's Aviano Air Base in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn.
Associated Press
TRIPOLI, Libya
Moammar Gadhafi’s snipers and tanks are terrorizing civilians in the coastal city of Misrata, a resident said, and the U.S. military warned Tuesday it was “considering all options” in response to dire conditions there that have left people cowering in darkened homes and scrounging for food and rainwater.
The U.S. is days away from turning over control of the air assault on Libya to other countries, President Barack Obama said. Just how that will be accomplished remains in dispute: Obama spoke Tuesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in hopes of quickly resolving the squabble over the transition.
“When this transition takes place, it is not going to be our planes that are maintaining the no-fly zone. It is not going to be our ships that are necessarily enforcing the arms embargo. That’s precisely what the other nations are going to do,” the president said at a news conference in El Salvador as he neared the end of a Latin American trip overshadowed by events in Libya.
Gadhafi, meanwhile, made his first public appearance in a week, promising enthusiastic supporters at his residential compound in Tripoli, “In the short term, we’ll beat them; in the long term, we’ll beat them.”
Libyan state TV broadcast what it said was live coverage of Gadhafi’s less-than-five-minute statement. Standing on a balcony, he denounced the coalition bombing attacks on his forces.
“O great Libyan people, you have to live now. This time of glory —this is a time of glory that we are living,” he said.
State TV said Gadhafi was speaking from his Bab Al-Aziziya residential compound, the same one hit by a cruise missile Sunday night. Reporters were not allowed to enter the compound as he spoke.
Heavy anti-aircraft fire and loud explosions sounded in Tripoli after nightfall, possibly a new attack in the international air campaign that so far has focused on military targets.
One of Gadhafi’s sons may have been killed, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told ABC News on Tuesday. She cited unconfirmed reports and did not say which son she meant. She said the “evidence is not sufficient” to confirm this.
Clinton also told ABC that people close to Gadhafi are making contact with people abroad to explore options for the future, but she did not say that one of the options might be exile. She said they were asking, “What do we do? How do we get out of this? What happens next?”
Despite the allies’ efforts to keep Gadhafi from overwhelming rebel forces trying to end his four-decade rule, conditions have deteriorated sharply in the last major city the rebels hold in western Libya.
The Obama administration is eager to relinquish leadership of the hurriedly assembled coalition. A NATO-led operation would require the unanimous support of member nations, but two of them, France and Turkey, do not want the alliance to take over. A compromise was emerging that would see NATO take a key role, but the operation would be guided by a political committee of foreign ministers from the West and the Arab world.