NATO Strikes Qaddafi Compound

A photo taken during a guided government tour showed damage to an office building in Tripoli, Libya, early Monday.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT

TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO warplanes struck Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s compound here early on Monday and also bombed a state television complex in an escalation of the air campaign to aid the rebellion against his four decades in power.

The attack on the compound was the third since air raids began in mid-March, but the strike at the television complex was the most significant broadening yet of the NATO air campaign, suggesting that nonmilitary targets would be hit in an effort to break down the instruments of Colonel Qaddafi’s broader control.

A senior Libyan government official said that the strike knocked state television off the air for about a half hour.

In the port of Misurata, 130 miles east of Tripoli, the capital, rebels reported that a widely publicized government pullback had given way to renewed shelling by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces from outside the city. The initial withdrawal over the weekend after a nearly two-month siege had bewildered some rebels.

(More here.)