Nato frets over civilian deaths in Libya air raid
Photo | AFP
Libyan rebels pray on the road near the strategic oil town of Brega on April 02, 2011 as three days of heavy fighting between Libyan rebels and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi around the town left 11 people dead, including eight civilians, doctors and AFP journalists reported.
What you need to know:
- Driver and three students said to have been killed as rebels claim oil town
Brega, Saturday
Nato voiced concern today about reports of civilian deaths in a coalition airstrike near Brega as rebels claimed victory in the battle for the key Libyan oil town.
A rebel civilian official told AFP that coalition warplanes had killed 13 people, four of them civilians, in an air raid some 15 kilometres east of Brega on Friday.
The civilians were an ambulance driver and three medical students from Libya’s second city of Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in the east.
They had been part of a rebel convoy of five or six vehicles, said Issa Khamis, liaison officer for the rebels’ transitional government in the town of Ajdabiya, east of Brega.
A spokeswoman for Nato, which leads the international coalition enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya and protecting civilians from attack, said the alliance was checking.
“We are looking into these reports,” said Oana Lungescu. “We are always concerned by reports of civilian casualties. Nato’s mission is to protect civilians and civilian areas from the threat of attack.”
No formal investigation had been launched, she said.
Friday’s air strike came as rebels shot tracer fire into the air to celebrate the entry of an advance column into Brega.
“It was a mistake” by the rebels,” Khamis said. “The aircraft thought they were coming under attack and fired on the convoy.”
There was no confirmation of the claim that Brega had fallen to the rebels, and an AFP correspondent on Saturday reported that fighting was still going on both inside and outside the town. Shelling inside could be heard from a distance.
Stay back
Rebels with only light arms were being told to stay back, and several of them told AFP that forces loyal to embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were holed up in the university in Brega, 800 kilometres east of Tripoli.
In Benghazi, Transitional National Council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said on Friday the opposition was ready for a truce, provided regime forces end their assaults on rebel-held cities.
But government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim rejected the offer, saying Kadhafi’s forces would not withdraw from towns they control.
A rebel spokesman, Mustafa Gheriani, said Tripoli’s rejection of the ceasefire offer showed that Kadhafi “wants no peace -- he wants to inflict as much damage on the Libyan people as possible before leaving power.” (AFP)
