Ghaddafi Loyalists shell Misurata as battle for Libya escalates

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shelled Misurata on Tuesday, recording children casualties.

Four children were said to have been killed in the shelling while trying to flee their home, a resident named Mohammed Ahmed told the Reuters news agency.

Gaddafi's regime has surrounded Misurata for days, bringing in tanks and positioning snipers on rooftops, in an attempt to snuff out opposition forces in one of the only cities in the west with their strong presence.
Ahmed said shelling in Misurata claimed at least 40 lives on Monday.

Misurata lies around 200km east of Tripoli, the capital, and is home to a major oil refinery.

Fighter jet crash

Meanwhile, a US F-15 jet crashed in Libya late on Monday, reportedly due to a technical fault during a raid against anti-aircraft defences.

The US Africa command said on Tuesday that both its crew ejected safely. A command spokeswoman told the media that the crash was not due to hostile action but a mechanical malfunction which was being investigated.

Adjabiya under siege

Fierce fighting was also reported in Adjabiya where opposition fighters were seen retreating in the face of an attack by government forces.

Television images on Aljaazeera TV, showed the road between the eastern city of Benghazi and Ajdabiya littered with the burnt-out wreckage of what was Gaddafi's armour and tanks destroyed in air raids by coalition forces.

Government troops retreated  about 100km from Benghazi, the opposition stronghold, after fierce bombardment by coalition aircraft destroyed much of their armour.

Calls for ceasefire

Meanwhile, international condemnation of the coalition implementing the no-fly zone has grown, with India joining China to publicly call for an end to the strikes that have crippled Libya's air defences, destroyed regime forces on the ground and given rebels room to recover after nearly losing Benghazi, their stronghold in the east.

A spokesman for China’s foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, said on Tuesday that the government opposed "the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties and more humanitarian disasters". China had already called for a ceasefire.

After an earlier statement issued by the Indian Foreign Ministry expressing regret for the military intervention in Libya, Foreign Minister, S M Krishna, called for a "cessation of armed conflict".

China and India were among five countries that abstained from the UN Security Council vote that approved Resolution 1973 authorising the no-fly zone and military intervention.

Turkey, which is not on the Security Council but is a key member of NATO, the Western military alliance, also warned that it could not agree to NATO taking over the enforcement of the no-fly zone if their mission went "outside the framework" of the UN decision.

The calls for ceasefire came after coalition warplanes hit targets across Tripoli for a third night. Two naval installations just outside the city, one of them thought to be the Abu Sitr Naval Base, were reportedly hit in the strikes.

Military assault

As fighting persisted in Misurata, international coalition forces reportedly struck radar installations at two air defence bases belonging to Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi in eastern Libya.

The developments came as the UN Security Council rejected a Libyan request for an emergency meeting to halt what it called "military aggression" by coalition forces three days after they began launching strikes aimed at disabling Libyan air defences.

The council decided instead to go ahead with a briefing slated for Thursday to give an update on the coalition air campaign to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon.