Nigeria Content Online

Forces loyal to
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi are hiding tanks and artillery and using “shoot
and scoot” tactics in Misrata, frustrating NATO air efforts to break a
weeks-long siege of the rebel-held Libyan city.

Despite repeated
bombing raids by the Western alliance, Gaddafi loyalists continue to
lay siege to the city and its vital port — making it one of the
bloodiest battlefields of Libya’s two-month-old conflict.

Rebels say
pro-Gaddafi forces are concealing tanks in buildings and artillery
beneath trees, firing from civilian-populated areas and near mosques.
“NATO can’t strike those places,” said Safieddin, a rebel spokesman in
the city.

Government forces
have abandoned the city centre to the rebels, but are entrenched in the
built-up outskirts, sometimes firing from the open and scuttling for
cover between buildings.

“There are houses
there. It’s not as densely populated as downtown Misrata but still it’s
the city,” said NATO’s senior military officer, Admiral Giampaolo di
Paula.

“So therefore they
are still continuing to use the tactics of shoot and scoot and that’s
why we need to continue to systematically degrade their military
firepower,” he said.

Two graphic examples came earlier this week.

After after two
days of NATO bombing raids, pro-Gaddafi forces rained artillery on the
port as an aid ship docked to evacuate hundreds of African migrant
workers and wounded Libyan civilians. Five people were killed, rebels
said, and hundreds were left stranded on the dock.

On Saturday,
pro-Gaddafi artillery strikes destroyed four fuel storage tanks in
Misrata, insurgents said, leaving the city facing fuel shortages.

“NATO is working, but Gaddafi’s forces are also working,” said a second rebel spokesman in Misrata, named Abdelsalam.

“Piece by piece”

“NATO has been more successful at destroying troops and military vehicles on the move than static forces,” he said.

“Every tank or
rocket battery destroyed by NATO is immediately replaced. Add to this
that they have been hiding tanks in the sand and inside buildings and
that they fire artillery rounds from under trees.” Rebels and residents
say the government forces’ snipers and mercenaries, many of them
sub-Saharan African migrants forced to fight, are holed up in
buildings, firing freely.

Libyan officials
deny that government forces are attacking civilians in Misrata, and say
they are fighting armed gangs linked al Qaeda. Media access is limited,
making it difficult to verify reports from battle zones.

Human rights groups
say hundreds of people, including many civilians, have been killed in
the fighting in Misrata, about 200 km (130 miles) east of the Libyan
capital, Tripoli.

Much of the city centre is in ruins.

Critics say NATO’s
inability so far to silence the guns demonstrates the limits of waging
war from the skies — amply demonstrated in the 1999 NATO bombing
campaign in then-Yugoslavia to force the withdrawal of Serb forces from
Kosovo. It took 78 days, and the credible threat of ground forces,
before Slobodan Milosevic’s forces retreated.