Gaddafi offered way out amid deadly clashes

Tripoli, Saturday

Turkey said it has offered Muammar Gaddafi guarantees to leave Libya but has yet to receive a reply, as rebels reported his forces killed 20 people in a fierce assault on Misrata.

Fresh Nato-led strikes sent up plumes of smoke Friday in Tripoli, where Gaddafi has his residence, but US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned the air war on the strongman’s forces could be in peril because of military shortcomings.

In a military update on Friday’s strikes, the British defence ministry said its fighters had destroyed four tanks “hidden in an orchard” near the town of Al-Aziziyah, southwest of Tripoli.

Tornado and Typhoon jets also bombed a military base at Al-Mayah on the western outskirts of the capital, it said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government had offered exit “guarantees” to the embattled Libyan leader, whom rebels have been trying to oust since February following a bloody crackdown on pro-reform protests.

Has no other option

Gaddafi “has no other option than to leave Libya — with a guarantee to be given to him,” Erdogan said on NTV television.

“We have given him this guarantee. We have told him we will help him to be sent wherever he wants to go,” he added, without elaborating.

“Depending on the reply we will get from him, we will take up the issue with our (Nato) allies, but unfortunately we have received no reply so far.”

His comments came after a day of deadly fighting near the port city of Misrata, the rebels’ most significant enclave in western Libya, some 200 kilometres from Tripoli.

Gaddafi’s forces had bombarded the Dafnia area on Misrata’s outskirts with Grad rockets, heavy artillery and tank shells, a rebel said.

“Twenty people, both civilians and rebels, were killed and more than 80 wounded,” he added.

But they had beaten back an attack by loyalist troops, leaving “dead and wounded among the Gaddafi forces,” he said.

(AFP)