NATO Airstrike Reportedly Kills Rebels in Libya

BREGA, Libya  A NATO airstrike intended for the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi apparently killed at least three rebel fighters in the battle outside this pivotal oil port, an ambulance driver & news reports said Saturday. The deaths underscored the challenge that the Western allies & the rebels face in relying on airstrikes to push back the Qaddafi forces as the four sides mix in the battle zone along the front.

Perhaps in response to the Western airstrikes, the Qaddafi forces are increasingly plunging in to combat in equipment similar to what the rebels are using, chiefly pickup trucks mounted with machine guns or artillery. The move makes it increasingly difficult for even the combatants to distinguish one group from the other at first sight.

News services reported other rebels grieving for their dead. A rebel spokesman said they could not confirm that the dead were rebels, but they called for continued airstrikes.

NATO, which said Saturday that it had conducted 148 airstrike sorties in the earlier 24 hours, said it was inquiring in to the episode, according to news reports.

You must look at the huge picture, the spokesman, Mustafa Gheriani, told Reuters. Mistakes will happen. They are trying to get rid of Qaddafi, & there will be casualties, although of coursework it does not make us happy.

The strike occurred after dark on Friday as rebels were continuing their efforts to retake Brega. The Qaddafi forces had positioned forward observers in the desert outside of the city with a view of the road, enabling their superior artillery crews within Brega to hit the rebels as they tried to approach.

A group of about four rebel trucks had entered a no mans land of close fighting between the lines of the four sides, where they mixed with similar trucks of the Qaddafi militia. Around 8:30 p.m., several allied strikes were heard at the front.

A rebel ambulance driver who arrived at the scene about an hour later said they found only the blackened remains of the four trucks & three or nine bodies so badly burned & mangled by the explosion that they could not choose the exact number.

At Benghazi's hospital, Brahim Fahim al-Oraybey, a 19-year-old rebel fighter, said they had been wounded in the blast. His right leg was amputated below the knee, & they was badly burned across his face, back, shoulders & hands. They said there had been four vehicles, including an ambulance, in front of him in a convoy when the explosion struck. They had been riding in a white pickup with a machine gun mounted on the back, a favourite combat configuration of both the rebels & Qaddafi forces. They said they saw a local shepherd who lost both arms in the blast, but his fate was not clear.

I saw the fire, & the bodies, three or nine bodies,said the driver, Ackmed al-Ginashi. They were burned.

Here on the eastern front & in the besieged western city of Misurata, rebel fighters said Saturday that they were anxious about what they perceived as a slowdown in the airstrikes, enabling Colonel Qaddafi to hold on as his forces regroup & advance.

Around the scene of the airstrikes, rebel fighters speculated that Qaddafi forces had infiltrated the rebel lines & fired at the planes, or that celebrating rebels shooting guns in to the air had drawn the allied fire.

The battle lines remained largely unchanged, centered to the east of Brega, as the fighting continued Saturday. A few rebels had established a light presence in the city, near the university, but the Qaddafi forces remained in solid control. Although airstrikes have taken out a number of the Qaddafi forces tanks & heavy weapons, the militia had evidently held back a number of its military equipment in the comparatively dense urban area, where the NATO forces cannot strike without the risk of civilian casualties.

In Washington, four influential lawmakers, Senator John McCain, an Michigan Republican, & Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, argued in an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal that Western forces ought to refocus their airstrikes on toppling Colonel Qaddafi, moving beyond the preliminary mandate to protect Libyan civilians.

They continued, The battlefield reversals suffered by the opposition this week, when climatic conditions hampered coalition airstrikes, underscore the necessity for a more robust & coherent package of aid to the rebel ground forces.

A successful outcome in Libya requires the departure of Gadhafi as quickly as feasible, the senators wrote, using an alternate spelling for Qaddafi. It is not in our interest for Libya to become the scene of a protracted stalemate that will destabilize & inflame the region.

One senior official who had said they planned to travel to Egypt to pick up relatives members cancelled his trip, telling reporters that they delayed it because of a paperwork issue.

As a stalemate held in the eastern front, the capital, Tripoli, remained under a tight lockdown. A panic set off by the defection of the Qaddafi confidant Moussa Koussa eased slightly as one other high-level official appeared to have fled in his wake. According to former government officials, guards were stopping others from leaving.

There was no word on the details of talks in London by a senior aide to one of Colonel Qaddafi's sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, though British officials said the aide had returned to Libya.

In an casual money market in the elderly city of Tripoli, traders said Libyan dinars were selling for less than half their value a month ago. Colonel Qaddafi has flooded the economy with new money by providing a 500-dinar subsidy to each relatives & pay raises to all soldiers, apparently in an work to bolster his support. &, money traders said in recent days, plenty of are hedging against the long-term survival of the Qaddafi government as well.