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Incident

NATO says likely hit rebels by mistake defends Libya campaign

08 April 2011 20:41 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. NATO said on Friday its aircraft probably killed rebels in a "friendly fire" incident on Thursday near the oil port of Brega but defended its Libya campaign, saying it was stepping up operations, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
Rebels said on Thursday that five of their fighters were killed in a NATO strike on a column of tanks moving toward Brega from Ajdabiyah further east. The pilots apparently believed the tanks belonged to forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
British Rear Admiral Russell Harding, deputy commander of NATO operations in Libya, told a news briefing: "It would appear that two of our strikes may have resulted in deaths of (rebel) forces. The incident took place in the east of Brega where fighting had gone back and forth on the road to Ajdabiyah."
Harding said the situation was "fluid", and NATO was finding it difficult to distinguish between rebel forces and those of Gaddafi.
NATO accuses Gaddafi’s military of hiding equipment in urban areas or behind human shields.
"For the last 48 hours and maybe longer, the situation in Brega and Ajdabiyah has been fluid. If someone wants to define that as a stalemate, that’s fine. All I am saying it is fluid, but in a reasonably small area," Harding said.
The alliance has come under pressure to overcome what a senior U.S. general called a stalemate in Libya, with NATO air strikes holding a balance between forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi and rebels in eastern cities.
Harding rejected rebel charges that NATO is sluggish in ordering strikes to help their uprising to end more than four decades of Gaddafi rule.
"The operational tempo has been steadily increasing" since the alliance took over command from a Western coalition led by the United States, Britain and France last week to fulfil a United Nations’ mandate, he said.
POLITICAL SOLUTION
Echoing U.S. comments that Gaddafi could not be overthrown by military force alone, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu added:
"We have always made clear there is no purely military solution to this conflict. This is why it is so important to find a political solution. For this there is no stalemate."
Harding said NATO had succeeded in striking a number of targets this week.
"Since we started this effort, we have hit targets including T-72 tanks, armored personnel carriers, rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles and ammunition dumps in locations near Misrata, Ras Lanuf and Brega," he said.
"Some approaches have destroyed equipment and disrupted military formations, others have (targeted) lines of communication, cutting the government forces’ access to vital supplies. Others have struck directly at forces attacking civilians."