NATO widens pressure on Libya

Associated Press

TRIPOLI, Libya

NATO widened its campaign to weaken Moammar Gadhafi’s regime with airstrikes on desert command centers and sea patrols to intercept ships, the military alliance said Saturday, amid signs of growing public anger over fuel shortages in government-held territory.

In the coastal town of Zawiya, crowds apparently outraged by dwindling fuel supplies tried to stab reporters in a minibus on a state-supervised trip to the Tunisian border.

The journalists — a Chinese news correspondent and two Britons — were not harmed in the attack, the first of its kind targeting foreign reporters covering the Libyan conflict.

The assailants also attacked the government official accompanying the reporters — once unimaginable in Libya and a sign of the growing frustrations of residents struggling to cope with rising food prices and gasoline shortages.

Gadhafi has remained defiant against the widening NATO attacks and international pressure to step down.

At the same time, however, NATO has come under increasing criticism that it is overstepping the U.N. Security Council’s mandate, which provides for the protection of civilians but not for wider attacks. The Pan African Parliament, the legislative body of the African Union, plans an emergency session next week to discuss what it calls NATO’s “military aggression.”