Friday, April 1, 2011

Current News Libya Gaddafi hits Benghazi Use Allied planes

Current News Libya

Current News Libya Gaddafi hits Benghazi Use Allied planes : At this time Gaddafi hits Benghazi. Allied warplanes have gone into in action to stop Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s forces attacking the rebel-held city of Benghazi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday

Allied warplanes are stopping Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces attacking the rebel-held city of Benghazi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday.

Gaddafi’s troops on Saturday morning pushed into the outskirts of Benghazi, the second city of some 670,000 people, in an apparent attempt to pre-empt Western air strikes that came after a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in Paris.

But as the meeting ended, Sarkozy announced that allied air forces had already gone into action.

“Our planes are already preventing air attacks on the city,” he said, adding that military action supported by France, Britain, the United States and Canada and backed by Arab nations could be halted if Gaddafi stopped his forces attacking.
Earlier, a French military source told Reuters that French reconnaissance planes were flying over Libya.

Hundreds of cars full of refugees fled east from Benghazi towards the Egyptian border after the city came under bombardment overnight. One family of 13 women from a grandmother to small children, rested at a roadside hotel.

“I’m here because when the bombing started last night my children were vomiting from fear,” said one of them, a doctor, sitting crying in the lobby of a hotel on the road to Egypt. “All I want to do is get my family to a safe place and then get back to Benghazi to help. My husband is still there.”

In the besieged western city of Misrata, residents said government forces shelled the rebel town again on Saturday and they were facing a humanitarian crisis as water supplies had been cut off for a third day.

“I am telling you, we are scared and we are alone,” a Misrata resident, called Saadoun, told Reuters by telephone.

Gaddafi said Western powers had no right to intervene.

“This is injustice, this is clear aggression,” government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim quoted Gaddafi as saying in a letter to France, Britain and the United Nations. “You will regret it if you take a step towards interfering in our internal affairs.”

Allied warplanes have gone into in action to stop Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces attacking the rebel-held city of Benghazi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday.

Gaddafi’s troops on Saturday morning pushed into the outskirts of Benghazi, a city of 670,000 people, in an apparent attempt to pre-empt military intervention expected after a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in Paris.

But as the meeting ended, Sarkozy announced that allied air forces had already gone into action.

French warplanes began attacking selected targets in Libya as part of a U.N.-sanctioned military quarantine of air and ground forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, a defense spokesman in Paris confirmed Saturday.

About an hour after French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the joint action against Gadhafi, a Defense Ministry spokesman in Paris said that the first shot had been fired by a French jet on a Libyan military vehicle.

Sarkozy’s announcement came on the heels of an emergency meeting in Paris of the United States, Britain and France, backed by unspecified Arab countries, on how to implement the action, including a no-fly zone aimed at grounding Gadhafi’s air force.

Earlier Saturday, the rebel-held stronghold of Benghazi came under heavy bombardment by loyalist forces, despite Gadhafi’s claim that he was honoring a cease-fire.