Saturday, July 23, 2011

Libya rebels claim strike on regime, NATO said it had struck a "command and control node".


 Brandon Leopold 


People gather near a portrait of Gaddafi in Tripoli's Green Square on Friday, before the explosions [Reuters]
The Libyan capital was rocked by a series of explosions, thought to be the result of NATO airstrikes, in the early hours of Saturday morning.At least seven blasts were reported in Tripoli, including some near Bab al-Aziziya, a compound and command centre used by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, that has been bombed numerous times before.


There was no official word from the Libyan regime on the targets or whether there were any casualties. NATO said it had struck a "command and control node". The explosions came after what the opposition said was a rare rebel attack on regime officials in the capital on Friday. Gaddafi's prime minister, al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, was injured when rebel fighters fired rockets at a building where a group of officials were supposedly meeting, said Ali Essawi, the rebels' foreign affairs chief. Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi, close aide Mansour Daw and prominent son Saif al-Islam were also in the room with Mahmoudi, Essawi told a news conference in Rome.
A representative of the Free Generation Movement, an opposition group in the capital, said fighters had fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a building in the Hai al-Andalus neighbourhood. Senussi was uninjured, the activist said, but he did not mention the other officials allegedly present. Mousa Ibrahim, a regime spokesman, denied that an attack had taken place but acknowledged there had been an explosion, which he blamed on a kitchen gas cylinder.



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