NATO jets destroy Libyan military depot

18/07/2011| IslamWeb

NATO jets have struck a military storage facility and other targets in the eastern outskirts of the capital, Tripoli.

Sunday's attacks came two days after major international players recognized Libya's opposition leadership as the country's legitimate representative.

Opposition advances on the eastern oil city of Brega, meanwhile, stretched into their fourth day, with reports of pitched street battles in residential areas.

From Tripoli, bright flashes could be seen on the eastern horizon just after midnight, followed by a steady rumbling that went on for an hour.

Fighter jets could be heard crisscrossing the night sky lit up by a near full moon, and were heard until Sunday afternoon.

NATO said its forces hit a military storage facility, along with three radar sites and an anti-aircraft missile launcher east of Tripoli.

The opposition has received a boost from its recognition by the Contact Group on Libya at a conference in Turkey on Friday and a pledge to transfer Libya's billions in frozen assets to its coffers.

Nevertheless, the struggle against Muammar Gaddafi has settled into a stalemate since the mass uprising against his rule broke out in mid-February.

The fighters have set up an interim administration in the eastern city of Benghazi and seized control of the port city of Misurata and much of the western Nafusa Mountains.

Gaddafi controls the rest of Libya from his stronghold in Tripoli.

Battle at Brega

NATO reported it flew a total of 110 sorties and carried out 45 attacks on Saturday.

Its forces also struck several targets around Brega, possibly in support of the opposition assault on the town, destroying a tank, a pair of rocket launchers and five vehicles.

Mohammed al-Rajaly, a spokesman for the Libyan opposition, said there is street-to-street fighting with automatic weapons in Brega, representing the farthest the fighters have reached in their months of trying to retake the town.

Brega is the transport terminal for oil and natural gas pumped from the fields deep in Libya's south and has changed hands several times in the fighting.

One fighter was killed and 15 were wounded, according to Mohammed Idris, a doctor at the hospital in the nearby city of Ajdabiya.

On Saturday, 10 opposition fighters were killed in a failed assault.

On the whole, however, their efforts to move on Tripoli have got bogged down in the face of better-equipped and trained government troops.

"Each time the opposition fighters try to advance to an area where Gaddafi loyalists have been stationed, they hit a minefield," Al Jazeera's Hoda Hamid, reporting from the northern city of Misurata on Sunday, said.

"Now this is a problem for them ... and as they try to push further east or west, the problem will become bigger."

PHOTO CAPTION

Libyan national security officers stand guard at a street in the opposition-held city of Misrata.

Al-Jazeera