TRIPOLI - Libyan rebels said they had made gains by driving return of the troops of Muammar Gaddafi on the edges of the East and West of the city of port of Misrata and encircling them at the airport.
The rebels, said Tuesday that they had taken also the town of Zareek, approximately 25 km (15 miles) West of Misrata, but were still trying to extinguish the fires caused by an attack by Government week last of fuel storage tanks.
Misrata, besieged by the forces of Gaddafi for eight weeks, is strategically important to the hopes of rebels to overthrow the Libyan leader, because it is the only city they hold in the West of the North African country.
NATO missile launched strike Tuesday in the region of Tripoli on targets which appeared to include composed of Gaddafi, said witnesses. NATO later said that he led a strike against a position of command and control of the Government in the capital.
After two months of rebellion related uprisings this year, in other Arab countries the war reached a stalemate. Rebels take Benghazi and other towns of the East of oil production, while the Government controls the capital and most of the West.
Thousands were killed in the fighting.
The Government says the rebels are armed criminals and militants for al-Qaeda and that the majority of the Libyans support Kadhafi, who has been in power since 1969.
It is not appeared in public since April 30, when an air strike by NATO on a house in the capital killed his youngest son and three grandchildren.
The rebels fight against the power of superior firepower of Gaddafi, said Government forces bombed a residential area outside the Misrata Tuesday and 100 rebel fighters were wounded in a separate bombing attack.
Rebels had surrounded forces of Gaddafi at the airport and an Academy of the air near the southernmost neighbourhood of al Ghiran, where the two parties fought battles Monday, a witness and a rebel spokesman said.
"The plan is to hunt airport Gaddafi forces and the Academy of the air force where they are now trapped,"rebel spokesman Abdelsalam said by telephone from Misrata.""
It is difficult to independently verify accounts of the events in Misrata.
"We continue to have success, but our weakness is that we do not hold on to areas take us in hand, said Abdelsalam.".
DILEMMA OF NATO
The proximity of the forces of Gaddafi of civilian areas difficult for NATO to fulfill its mandate of protecting civilians, Brig.-Gen. Claudio Gabellini, head of the Libya NATO mission operations officer, told journalists in Brussels.
He said that NATO has yet managed to destroy military targets more than 30 in Misrata since April 29.
"Pro-Gaddafi forces continued to bombard the citizens of Misrata with long range mortars and rockets, artillery indiscriminately firing explosive shells in the city", said Gabellini.
The Libyan Government says that the NATO intervention is an act of colonial aggression by the Western powers to steal oil reserves of the country.
The war has caused misery for tens of thousands forced to flee by land or by boat.
Aid agencies say witnesses reported a ship carrying 500 to 600 sinking people last weekend near Tripoli and that many bodies have been seen in the water.
Prior to this, about 800 people had disappeared since March 25, after trying to escape from the Libya, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees. Most were from sub-Saharan Africa.
Libyan officials said Tuesday four children were injured, two of them seriously, by shrapnel of glass caused by explosions of NATO strikes of the day to the next.
Officials showed foreign journalists a hospital in the capital, where some Windows were smashed, apparently by the waves from the explosion of a NATO strike that toppled a nearby communications tower.
Journalists have also been taken to a building housing the High Commission for children, which had been completely destroyed by the Government. The old colonial building was damaged, in what officials said was a NATO bombardment on April 30.
"The direction of at least an explosion suggests composed of Gaddafi has been taken to target," said a witness.
Libyan officials, said that the Government released 120 prisoners rebel on Tuesday. A journalist of Reuters in Tripoli saw men join their families at an event organized in the Government.
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