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Coalition air strikes bombed Libya’s air defence systems for a second night in which a missile flattened a building housing Muammar Gaddafi’s command centre very close to his private residence in Tripoli, even as the US insisted he is not on the target list.
The missile launched during operations by the US and European forces to patrol the no-fly zone destroyed what one coalition official described today as Mr Gaddafi’s “command and control capability” inside the Libyan leader’s compound at Bab el-Aziziya in south of capital Tripoli.
It was unclear where Mr Gaddafi was at the time of the strike on his air defences as part of a renewed allied assault on Libya involving British submarines and RAF Tornado jets.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr Robert Gates, said the US expects to turn control of the Libya military mission over to a coalition probably headed either by the French and British or by NATO “in a matter of days’’.
The three-storey administrative building which was flattened is about 50 metres from Mr Gaddafi’s iconic tent where the Libyan strongman generally meets guests in Tripoli. It was hit by a missile, the Libyan government spokesman, Mr Moussa Ibrahim, told reporters who were taken to the site by bus.
“This was a barbaric bombing which could have hit hundreds of civilians gathered at the residence of Muammar Gaddafi about 400 metres away from the building which was hit,” Mr Ibrahim said.
Smoke was seen rising from within the heavily fortified compound which houses Mr Gaddafi’s private quarters as well as military barracks and other installations. A Libyan official displayed to reporters a piece of shrapnel, apparently from the missile, at the ruined building.
The Pentagon spokesman Vice-Admiral, Mr William Gortney, at a news briefing at Washington said: “We are not going after Gaddafi. At this particular point I can guarantee he is not on the target list.”
Mr Gortney also said it had no evidence of civilian casualties in airstrikes by the coalition forces over Libya.
“There is no indication of any civilian casualties,” he insisted in comments that came after Tripoli’s official media said the airstrikes were targeting civilian objectives and that that there were “civilians casualties as a result of this aggression’’.
In contrast to US position, the British Defence Secretary, Mr Liam Fox, suggested that Mr Gaddafi was a legitimate target, so long as steps were taken to avoid harm to civilians around him.
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