Fighting rages in Libya

several towns yesterday despite a UN-mandated no-fly zone aimed at stopping the violence.
Meanwhile, doubts persisted over the best way to continue the campaign aimed at preventing Gadda-fi’s forces from harming civilians in their battle against the rebels, and where it was leading.
Residents of Yafran, 130km southwest of Tripoli, said at least nine people had been killed when clashes erupted between the two sides.
Rebels also said they were under intense attack in their enclave of Misrata, east of the capital, which has been besieged by Gaddafi’s forces for weeks, with four children killed yesterday.
The US Africa Command said a US F-15 jet crashed in rebel-held eastern Libya late Monday following a malfunction. Its two crew members ejected and were safe.
Command spokeswoman Nicole Dalrymple told AFP that the crew had sustained minor injuries and that one had been recovered while an operation to pick up the second was ongoing.
She said the aircraft was taking part in a raid to neutralise Libyan anti-aircraft defences but the crash, the first loss of a warplane since the campaign began Saturday, was not a result of hostile action.
After a third night of strikes on Gaddafi’s strongholds and defence structure, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said “significant military fighting that has been going on should recede in the next few days.”
Destroying radar and missiles under Gaddafi’s control would pave the way for a no-fly zone that could be patrolled by combat aircraft, with the United States assuming a supporting role, Gates said in Moscow.
A resident of Yafran told AFP that “Gaddafi’s forces launched a deadly offensive in the area on Monday and yesterday. The fighting killed at least nine people and wounded many.”
The resident added, “We had been waiting for the coalition to stop the advance of Gaddafi’s battalions into the area. In the absence of such an intervention, the regime wanted to take the city quickly by bombarding it and carrying out massacres.”
A rebel spokesman reached by telephone in Misrata said the insurgents remained in control despite an onslaught by Gaddafi’s loyalists who had opened fire with tanks and set snipers on roofs to gun down people in the streets.
The spokesman said five people, four of them children, had been killed yesterday, a day after a medic in the city confirmed a death toll of 40 and said at least 300 people had been wounded.
Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said on Monday that Misrata, Libya’s third city 214 kilometres east of Tripoli, was “liberated three days ago” and that Gaddafi’s forces were hunting “terrorist elements.”
A standoff persisted in eastern Libya, where Gaddafi forces in and around Ajdabiya, south of the insurgents’ capital of Benghazi, easily repulsed attempts by the disorganised and ill-armed rebels to advance against them.
Africa Command chief General Carter Ham said Monday that US forces had no mission to support a rebel ground offensive, but at the same time Gaddafi’s troops show “little will or capability to resume offensive operations.”
Coalition forces, led by the United States, France and Britain and including some other European states and Arab country Qatar, are acting under UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorising “all necessary means” to protect civilians.
There is coordination but no unified command, and moves to hand over control of the operation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are dividing the alliance.
NATO ambassadors resumed talks yesterday after “very difficult” discussions on Monday which failed to overcome their divisions.
But a diplomat said they had agreed to use the organisation’s naval power to enforce an arms embargo on Libya ordered under UN resolution 1973.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruled Ankara out of sending any combat mission to Libya but said it could take part in operations with humanitarian purposes.
France also has doubts about the impact on Arab countries of NATO taking control – though the Arab League has backed the no-fly zone – while Germany refused to vote for resolution 1973.
Norway said Monday its six fighter jets would stay grounded as long as it was unclear who was running the operation, while Britain, the United States and Italy, whose air bases are the main platform for missions to Libya, are pushing the strongest for a NATO role.
Belgian and Spanish warplanes began patrolling Libyan skies on Monday, British Typhoon fighters and Canadian jets launched their first missions from Italian bases and a Greek source said France’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle should join in from waters off Crete, probably by today. -AFP.