Western warplanes silenced Muammar Gaddafi's artillery and tanks besieging the rebel-held town of Misrata on Wednesday after an American admiral warned that the Libyan leader's armour was now in the cross-hairs. Breathing defiance, Qadhafi earlier said Western powers who carried out a fourth night of air strikes on Libya to protect civilians under a UN mandate were "a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history."
The Western powers enforcing the UN resolution with their military might are struggling to agree on a coherent command structure including Nato after Washington said it wanted to hand over leadership of the campaign in the coming days. Gaddafi's tanks had kept up the shelling of Misrata, killing dozens of people this week, and residents said a "massacre" was taking place with doctors treating the wounded in hospital corridors. Snipers killed five people on Wednesday, they said. "Now with the air strikes we are more optimistic," Saadoun, a Misrata resident, told Reuters by telephone. "These strikes give us hope, especially the fact they are precise and are targeting the (Gaddafi) forces and not only the bases."
"Before the strikes, tanks shelled the city ... but now they haven't fired a single artillery (round) since the air strike." Such precision bombing missions can be directed at long distance with electronic systems and sometimes use rebel agents in the target zone or special forces long-range reconnaissance patrols who guide the warplanes in.
At least two explosions were heard in the Libyan capital Tripoli before dawn on Wednesday on a fourth night of strikes and Gaddafi looked set to dig in for the long haul. "We will not surrender," Gaddafi told supporters forming a human shield to protect him at his Tripoli compound, which came under attack in 1986 from the US Reagan administration and once again in the current round of air raids.