NATO Attack Destroys Much of Qaddafi Compound

Reuters — NATO air strikes shook the area around Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s compound in central Tripoli on Tuesday.

By JOHN F. BURNS
NYT

TRIPOLI, Libya — In a sudden, sharp escalation of NATO’s air campaign over Libya, warplanes dropped more than 60 bombs on targets in Tripoli on Tuesday, obliterating large areas of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound.

In response, Colonel Qaddafi posted an audio recording on Libyan state television vowing never to surrender or accept defeat. “We welcome death,” he said. “Martyrdom is a million times better.”

The unusual daylight raids, the most intense on the Libyan capital since the aerial campaign started more than 11 weeks ago, began in midmorning and continued after dark — fulfilling NATO commanders’ recent warnings of an impending rise in the intensity of attacks. What appeared to be bunker-busting bombs laid waste to an area of about two acres in one corner of the compound, destroying six or seven major buildings and leaving a twisted, smoking mass of steel and concrete.

A Libyan official said Tuesday night that the attacks killed 31 people and wounded dozens more, many of them security guards and “totally innocent civilians.” That number could not be confirmed.

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