NATO warplanes strike Tripoli

PanARMENIAN.Net - NATO warplanes struck Tripoli early Tuesday, May 10, in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks, hours after an uptick in fighting between rebels and Moammar Gadhafi's forces on a long deadlocked front line in the country's east.

NATO struck at least four sites in Tripoli, setting off crackling explosions that thundered through the city overnight. One strike hit a building that local residents said was used by a military intelligence agency. Another targeted a government building that officials said was sometimes used by parliament members.

It was not immediately clear what the other two strikes hit, but one of them sent plumes of smoke over Tripoli. Libyan officials would not say what that strike hit but the smoke appeared to come from the sprawling compound housing members of Gadhafi's family.

Between explosions, an aircraft dropped burning flares. Some residents responded by raking the sky with gunfire and beeping their horns.

The Tripoli bombing came just hours after heavy fighting was reported Monday on the eastern front, south of Ajdabiya, a rebel-held town about 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Benghazi, the rebel headquarters in the east.

Hundreds of rebels gathered at a checkpoint outside Ajdabiya on Monday afternoon, when an AP photographer counted about 100 pickup trucks coming back from the front, each carrying four or five fighters and some with mounted submachine guns.

The rebels, firing their weapons into the air as they shouted and danced, said they had been told that NATO was going to launch airstrikes on Gadhafi's forces and they had been ordered to withdraw temporarily from the front.

No overall casualty figures were available. Two ambulances came to the local hospital, and doctors said they carried the bodies of four rebels, AP reports.