NATO Bombs Gadhafi Hometown, Rebels Poised to Attack
British warplanes bombed a bunker in Moammar Gadhafi’s birthplace of Sirte as rebel fighters prepared Friday to launch an offensive on the town, one of the last major regime holdouts east of Tripoli.
As insurgent leaders moved into Tripoli to begin a political transition, the African Union called for that process to be "inclusive."
And the U.N. human rights chief warned against assassinating Gadhafi, whose whereabouts are unknown and who has a $1.7 million rebel price on his head.
"At around midnight, a formation of Tornado GR4s ... fired a salvo of Storm Shadow precision-guided missiles against a large headquarters bunker in Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte," the defense ministry said in London.
Speculation that Gadhafi might have found refuge in the town, which lies 360 kilometers east of Tripoli, has not been confirmed.
NATO said on Friday its planes had hit 29 armed vehicles and a "command and control node" in the vicinity of Sirte.
A NATO official in Brussels told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity that the vehicles were part of a convoy advancing toward the rebel-held port of Misrata, about 140 kilometers away.
The alliance also destroyed on Wednesday refueling vehicles for Scud missiles after the regime fired one from Sirte earlier this week.
Regime forces in Sirte have been regularly targeted since the start of the campaign, the NATO official said, but it is in sharp focus now because "it's one of the last places he (Gadhafi) has control of."
"It has always been a stronghold of the regime and now the remnants of the regime are using it to launch attacks," the official said.
"Misrata is one of those cities we have to protect ... This regime, no matter what state it's in, is still capable of killing civilians."
Diehards of Gadhafi, whose son Seif al-Islam vowed from the start that loyalists would fight "to the last bullet", are still trying to reconstitute NATO-decimated weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, the official said.
"This large convoy is a very threatening move, as threatening as launching a missile."
"This is an extremely desperate and dangerous remnant of a former regime and they are obviously desperately trying to disrupt the fact that the Libyan people have started to take responsibility for their own country."
On Thursday, the National Transitional Council (NTC) moved many of its top people from their Benghazi base, just days after rebel fighters overran Tripoli, going on to capture Gadhafi’s headquarters and vast swathes of the capital.
Ali Tarhuni, a NTC official, said their leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, would arrive as soon as the security situation permitted.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights chief warned against bounty hunters who may be seeking to kill Gadhafi, saying assassinations are "not within the rule of law."
"That applies to Gadhafi as well as everybody else," said spokesman Rupert Colville in a response to a question about th reward for Gadhafi, dead or alive.
Colville said the "best solution" would be to capture Gadhafi alive and follow through on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for suspected crimes against humanity.
A senior African Union official said that with the conflict about to end, the body should support efforts for an inclusive transition in Libya.
"Now more than ever, we have to make efforts to ensure an inclusive and consensual transition to lead us to elections that will allow the Libyan people to freely choose their leaders," AU Commission chief Jean Ping said at the start of a meeting in Addis Ababa.
With fighting continuing in a conflict that the NTC chief says has killed more than 20,000 people, the horror of the situation was highlighted on Friday at a hospital in Tripoli.
Eighty putrefying corpses were found of people, apparently patients who had died for lack of treatment because doctors had fled for fear of the pro-Gadhafi snipers in the neighborhood.
The whereabouts of Gadhafi remain unknown despite an intensive search by rebel forces, and on Thursday he broadcast a new audio message calling on the populace to take up arms.
"We must resist these enemy rats, who will be defeated thanks to the armed struggle," he said.
The rebels are intent on finding Gadhafi so they can proclaim final victory in an uprising that began six months ago and was all but crushed by government forces before NATO warplanes gave crucial air support.
As the rebels worked to consolidate their gains politically, they were still desperately in need of funding.
NTC number two Mahmoud Jibril said in Istanbul on Friday that it was essential that the West release all of Libya's frozen assets.
"There will be high expectations after the collapse of the regime. The frozen assets must be released for the success of the new government to be established after the Gadhafi regime," he told a press conference.
"Salaries of civil servants need to be paid. The life needs to continue on its normal course," Jibril said, a day after senior diplomats of the Libya Contact Group met in Istanbul and agreed to speed up release of some $2.5 billion in frozen Libyan assets by the middle of next week.
At the same time, the U.N. Security Council released $1.5 billion of seized Libyan assets to be used for emergency aid. "The money will be moving within days," a U.S. diplomat said.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton warned that funds being released should not end up in the hands of Gadhafi loyalists.
And a boat carrying aid supplies and 50 humanitarian workers was leaving for Tripoli on Friday to evacuate more migrants, the International Organization for Migration said.
On Thursday, the agency managed to evacuate 263 migrants from Tripoli on a first ship, despite fighting in the area.
Bangladeshis, Chinese, Filipinos, Indians and Egyptians are expected to be among evacuees in the second operation.
Source: Agence France Presse
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