Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces attacked the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, television stations reported, as Western and Arab leaders prepared to meet to discuss implementing a no-fly zone to halt the assault.
Pro-Gaddafi forces entered the outskirts of Benghazi, a city of 1 million people, Al Jazeera reported. The station cited the head of the rebel council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, as saying bombing raids took place. A BBC correspondent reported seeing government tanks on a bridge in the eastern port city. CNN said Gaddafi forces pushed back rebels overnight and reported “loud explosions and smoke.” Television channels showed footage of a fighter jet being shot down over the city.
The assault would be in breach of a cease-fire that Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa said the regime was observing yesterday and that is a key demand of the United Nations. The UN Security Council authorized the use of air attacks and a no-fly zone over Libya two days ago to protect civilians.
Gaddafi said in a message to British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the UN resolution was void, a government spokesman told a televised news conference in Tripoli.
‘Our country’
“You will regret it if you intervene in our country,” Gaddafi said. “It is our country, not yours.”
Gaddafi said in a separate letter to President Barack Obama that he has “all the Libyan people on my side” and is fighting against Al-Qaeda.
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“What would you do if you found them taking over American cities by force? Tell me how you would act so I could do the same,” Gaddafi wrote, according to the spokesman, Ibrahim Moussa. “Even if Libya and America fought a war, God forbid, you will remain my son and I love you.” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend a meeting in Paris today on imposing the air-exclusion zone hosted by French President Sarkozy. Cameron, Ban and Arab leaders will also take part.
“Gaddafi is just trying to sow confusion and win time by announcing a cease-fire,” said Jan Techau, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels and a former analyst at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Defense College in Rome and the German Defense Ministry. “He knows if his troops get into Benghazi it will be very messy for the allies to use air power,” Techau said in a telephone interview.
Obama’s demands
Obama, speaking at the White House yesterday, set out the demands he, Cameron and Sarkozy are imposing on the Libyan regime. Gaddafi must immediately stop attacks on civilians, halt his advance on Benghazi, and pull back forces from three embattled cities, Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiyah, scenes of deadly fighting in the past two weeks.
The Libyan leader must also re-establish water, gasoline and electricity supplies to all areas, and he must allow aid to “reach the people of Libya,” Obama said. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Gaddafi’s forces must be stopped.
“If Colonel Gaddafi were allowed to kill large numbers of Libyans to squash the hope of a different Libya, we shouldn’t be under any illusion,” Blair wrote in an article published today in the London-based Times newspaper. “We would send a signal of Western impotence in an area that analyzes such signals keenly. We would dismay those agitating for freedom, boosting opposition factions hostile to us.”
Face ‘consequences’
The US envoy to the UN, Susan Rice, said yesterday that Gaddafi isn’t complying with the Security Council resolution. The US is ready to act and Gaddafi will face “consequences,” she said on CNN.