French fighters in Libya

BENGHAZI—French fighter jets hit aircraft and a crossroads military base deep inside Libya on Thursday as the U.S. reduced its combat role in the international operation that is working to thwart Moammar Gadhafi’s forces exercise bike by land, sea and air.

Libya’s air force has been effectively neutralized, and the government has taken part of its fight to the airwaves. State television aired pictures of bodies it said were victims of airstrikes, but a U.S. intelligence report bolstered rebel claims that Gadhafi’s forces had simply taken bodies from a morgue.

International military support for the rebels is not open-ended: France set a timeframe on the international action at days or weeks — not months.

The Gadhafi regime asked international forces to spare its broadcast and communications infrastructure.
“Communications, whether by phones or other uses, are civilian and for the good of the Libyan nation to help us provide information, knowledge and co-ordinate everyday life. If these civilian targets are hit, it will make life harder for millions of civilians around Libya,” Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, told reporters in Tripoli.

Representatives for the regime and rebels were expected to attend an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday, according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who described it as a part of an effort to reach a cease-fire and political solution.

The U.S. has been trying to give up the lead role in the operation against Gadhafi’s forces, and NATO agreed late Thursday to assume one element of it — control of the no-fly zone. The U.S.-led coalition will still supervise attacks on targets on the ground, though fewer U.S. planes were used in airstrikes Thursday.

“Nearly all, some 75 per cent of the combat air patrol missions in support of the no-fly zone, are now being executed by our coalition partners,” Navy Vice Adm. William Gortney, told reporters at the Pentagon. Other countries were handling less than 10 per cent of such missions, he said.

The U.S. will continue to fly combat missions as needed, but its role ice cream machine supplier will mainly be in support missions such as refuelling allied planes and providing aerial surveillance of Libya, Gortney said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the international action would last days or possibly weeks, but not months. But he told RTL radio that in addition to protecting civilians, the mission “is also about putting Gadhafi’s opponents, who are fighting for democracy and freedom, in a situation of taking back the advantage.”

Libyan state television showed blackened and mangled bodies that it said were victims of airstrikes in Tripoli. Rebels have accused Gadhafi’s forces of taking bodies from the morgue and pretending they were civilian casualties.

A U.S. intelligence report on Monday, the day after coalition missiles attacked Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in the capital, said that a senior Gadhafi aide was told to take bodies from a morgue and place them at the scene of the bomb damage, to be displayed for visiting journalists. A senior U.S. defence official revealed the contents of the intelligence report on condition of anonymity because it was classified secret.
Gadhafi officials have claimed large numbers of casualties, both civilian and military, as a result of the coalition onslaught — a tragic and bitter irony, if true, for a mission designed to protect Libyan lives. But the international press corps in Tripoli under the watchful gaze of the regime has asked repeatedly to meet and interview injured survivors of the airstrikes and was rebuffed again Wednesday, as another day passed without evidence of blood spilled under the banner of the UN.

The French strikes hit a base about 250 kilometres south of the Libyan coastline, as well as a Libyan combat plane that had just landed outside the strategic city of Misurata, France’s military said.

Briefing reporters in Tripoli late Thursday, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said no Libyan planes have been in the air since the no-fly zone was declared. He said a plane might have been destroyed in an allied attack on an air base.

Canadian CF-18s have been tasked with attacking ground targets. The jets have flown four air-to-ground attack missions in the last few days, including blowing up an ammunition depot Wednesday .

No bombs were dropped in the other three sorties, but Maj.-Gen Tom Lawson said the overall campaign is progressing from attacking air threats posed by Libyan jets and helicopters to targets on the ground, such as tanks.

The Harper government initially autoclave dispatched six CF-18s to enforce the no-fly zone. It added a seventh aircraft as a spare early this week.

Two C-140 Aurora reconnaissance aircraft were added Thursday to patrol the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya.