Libyan Air Force destroyed

TRIPOLI: Western warplanes silenced Muammar Qaddafi’s artillery and tanks besieging the rebel-held town of Misrata on Wednesday and a British military official said Western forces had destroyed Libya’s Air Force and were flying with impunity across its airspace.

Saudi Arabia expressed strong support for the goals of the UN resolution on Libya and other Arab and Muslim states pledged to join the coalition against Qaddafi.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said in a statement that “Prince Saud (Al-Faisal) expressed strong support for the aims of UNSCR 1973 and the steps being taken by the international community to enforce it.” The foreign minister discussed developments in Libya and Bahrain with Cameroon late Tuesday.

Cameron also said Kuwait and Jordan would make logistical contributions to back efforts to protect civilians in Libya, emphasizing broad support for the operations.

NATO said Turkey has offered four frigates, a submarine and a support ship to help enforce the alliance’s mission to enforce a UN arms embargo on Libya. The alliance had offers of 16 ships to implement a decision to launch the mission taken by NATO this week, Brig. Pierre St Amand told a news briefing in Brussels.

Breathing defiance, Qaddafi earlier said Western powers carrying out airstrikes on Libya were “a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.”

The Western powers enforcing the UN resolution to protect Libyan civilians are struggling to agree on a coherent command structure including NATO after Washington said it wanted to hand over leadership of the campaign in the coming days.

While four nights of Western airstrikes hit Libyan air defenses and an armored column in the east, Qaddafi’s tanks had kept up their shelling of Misrata in the west, killing dozens of people this week. Residents said a “massacre” was taking place with doctors treating the wounded in hospital corridors. Government snipers killed 16 people on Wednesday, rebels said.

“Now with the airstrikes we are more optimistic,” Saadoun, a Misrata resident, told Reuters by telephone. “These strikes give us hope, especially the fact they are precise and are targeting the (Qaddafi) forces and not only the bases. Before the strikes, tanks shelled the city ... but now they haven’t fired a single artillery (round) since the airstrike.”

Prior to the Misrata strikes, US Rear Adm. Peg Klein said warplanes, which had been suppressing Libya’s air defenses, would now be sent out to attack Qaddafi’s tanks. “We are authorized, and the president made the nexus between the Security Council resolution and what he considers our legal mandate to attack those tanks. So that is the type of target that our strike aircraft will go at.”

British Air Vice Marshal Greg Bagwell said at a base in Italy that Western forces had destroyed Libya’s Air Force and were flying with impunity across its airspace, attacking ground troops wherever they threatened civilians.

The allies had flown 175 sorties in the last 24 hours, with the US flying 113 of those, Hueber said.

President Barack Obama categorically ruled out on Wednesday a land invasion to oust Qaddafi as coalition forces launched a fifth day of airstrikes against government military targets in the North African nation.

President Barack Obama said the United States will be pulling back this week from its dominant role in the international campaign aimed at preventing Qaddafi from attacking civilians.

Obama was asked in an interview with the Spanish-language network Univision if a land invasion would be out of the question in the event airstrikes fail to dislodge Qaddafi from power. Obama replied that it was “absolutely” out of the question.

Asked what the exit strategy is, Obama did not lay out a vision for ending the international action but rather said: “The exit strategy will be executed this week in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment.

“We’ll still be in a support role; we’ll still be providing jamming and intelligence and other assets that are unique to us; but this is an international effort that’s designed to accomplish the goals that were set out in the Security Council resolution.”

But NATO countries failed to agree Wednesday for the alliance to take over command of military operations from the United States. After ambassadors of the 28-nation alliance held a third day of meetings in Brussels, a diplomat said: “No decision on anything.”

Libya’s rebel national council based in the country’s east has named Mahmoud Jabril to head an interim government and pick ministers, Al Jazeera television reported. Jabril, a reformer who was once involved in a project to establish a democratic state in Libya, is already the head of a crisis committee to cover military and foreign affairs.

The national council wants to establish a secular democracy that would respect oil contracts awarded under Qaddafi if it toppled the Libyan leader, a member of the council said in Paris. Ali Zeidan, one of 31 members of the Libyan National Council, told reporters the rebels could overcome Qaddafi’s forces in 10 days if the coalition continued its UN-mandated strikes. ‘destroyed’