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Muhammad Zweid, secretary of the Libyan Parliament, said the intervention had caused some real harm against civilians and buildings. But he declined to specify which civilian buildings or locations were hit.

Officials took pains to show reporters a group of civilians whom they portrayed as volunteers who had flocked to Mr. Qaddafis compound to shield him from the attacks.

President Obama, speaking during a visit to Brazil, reiterated promises that no American ground forces would be used.

I am deeply aware of the risks of any military action, no matter what limits we place on it, he said. I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice, and its not a choice that I make lightly. But we cant stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.

The campaign began with French warplanes, which started their attacks even before the end of an emergency meeting among allied leaders in Paris. The officials, reacting to news that Colonel Qaddafis forces were attacking the rebel capital, Benghazi, despite international demands for a cease-fire, said they had no choice but to defend Libyan civilians and opposition forces.

But there were signs of disagreement among the allies in Paris. Some diplomats said that French insistence on the meeting had delayed military action against Colonel Qaddafis forces before they reached Benghazi, a charge that French officials denied.

Benghazi residents interviewed by telephone reported a relentless artillery barrage before government tanks entered the city from the west on Saturday morning. There was heavy fighting in the city center, and pro-Qaddafi snipers could be seen on the building that the rebel council used as a foreign ministry, not far from the courthouse that is the councils headquarters.

Our assessment is that the aggressive actions by Qaddafi forces continue in many places around the country, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after the Paris meeting. We saw it over the last 24 hours, and weve seen no real effort on the part of the Qaddafi forces to abide by a cease-fire, despite the rhetoric.

Western leaders acknowledged, though, that there was no endgame beyond the immediate United Nations authorization to protect Libyan civilians, and it was uncertain that even military strikes would force Colonel Qaddafi from power.

Many of the leaders who were in Paris had called for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and it may be that military intervention leads to negotiations with the opposition for the colonel and his family to leave or, at the least, buys time for the rebels to regroup.

There are risks, though. One widely held concern is the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority, opening the door for Islamic extremists to begin operating in a country that had been closed to them. The international effort, called Operation Odyssey Dawn, may also present a double standard: While the West has taken punitive action against Libya, a relatively isolated Arab state, the governments in Bahrain and Yemen have faced few penalties after cracking down on their own protest movements.

The main barrage of missile strikes began around 2 p.m. Eastern time, when the United States Navy fired cruise missiles that struck Libya roughly an hour later, Vice Adm. William Gortney told reporters in Washington. He said the Pentagon had not yet assessed the damage that the missiles had caused and would not be able to do so until dawn broke in Libya.

The missile strikes were the start of what Admiral Gortney called a multiphase operation to create a no-fly zone that would allow coalition aircraft to fly over Libya without the risk of being shot down. He would not say whether American aircraft would be involved in enforcing the no-fly zone, but he said that no American aircraft were directly over Libya on Saturday afternoon.

Admiral Gortney cast the United States as the leading edge among coalition partners in the opening phase of the attack. But in keeping with Mr. Obamas and Mrs. Clintons emphasis that the administration was not driving the efforts to strike Libya, the admiral and other Pentagon officials repeated that the United States would step back within days and hand over command of the coalition to one of its European allies.

The United States has at least 11 warships stationed near Tripoli, including three submarines the Scranton, the Florida and the Providence and the destroyers the Stout and the Barry. All five fired cruise missiles on Saturday, the Navy said. Other coalition ships in the Mediterranean included 11 from Italy and one each from Britain, Canada and France.

In a report whose accuracy could not be verified, Libyan state TV Sunday morning quoted the armed forces command as saying 48 people had been killed.

Before his forces came under attack on Saturday, Colonel Qaddafi issued letters warning Mr. Obama and other leaders not to use military might against him.

The tone of the letters one addressed to Mr. Obama and a second to Mr. Sarkozy, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations suggested that Colonel Qaddafi was leaving himself little room to back down.

Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans, he wrote in a letter that was read to the news media by a spokesman. This is injustice, it is clear aggression, and it is uncalculated risk for its consequences on the Mediterranean and Europe.

You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.

Colonel Qaddafi addressed Mr. Obama as my son in a letter that was jarring for its familiarity. I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son, and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me, he wrote. We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave, so that I could follow your example?

In Paris, the emergency meeting included the prime ministers or foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy, Qatar, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Mrs. Clinton for the United States.

Amr Moussa, who recently resigned as secretary general of the Arab League to run for president of Egypt, was also there, along with the leagues incoming leader, Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister of Iraq. Also attending were the European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Mr. Ban of the United Nations.

But there were no African leaders there. The African Union chief, Jean Ping, instead traveled to Mauritania for a meeting with the continents leaders who sought to mediate a peaceful end to the Libyan crisis.

The United States, France and Britain had insisted that at least some Arab governments be involved in the Libyan operation, at least symbolically, to remove the chance that Colonel Qaddafi would portray the military action as another Western colonial intervention in pursuit of oil. But there was no sign that any Arab military would explicitly take part.

The initial French air sorties, which were not coordinated with other countries, angered some of the leaders in Paris, according to a senior diplomat from a NATO country. Information about the movement of Colonel Qaddafis troops toward Benghazi had been clear on Friday, but France blocked any NATO agreement on airstrikes until the Paris meeting, the diplomat said, suggesting that the flights could have begun before government forces reached the city.

But Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said that there had been no delay because of the Paris meeting and no political decision to make the no-fly zone a NATO operation, which Paris has opposed from the start.

Perhaps in an effort to provide political cover before the allied strikes began, the Libyan government spokesman in Tripoli, Moussa Ibrahim, denied that pro-Qaddafi troops were attacking Benghazi, and he said that only the rebels had an incentive to break the cease-fire.

But in Benghazi, residents said the fighting was heavy as soldiers reached the city center along the main road, which is named for the anticolonial Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. And a Soviet-era MIG-23 fighter jet that rebels said they had captured in the early days of the uprising and that they had sent on a mission against government forces went down in flames in the city. The pilot ejected, but was reported to have died from his injuries.

We didnt know which side the shooting was coming from, said Umm Muftah, who escaped from Benghazi with her family about 2 p.m. A neighbor told her the balconies had been blown off her building. We saw black smoke, Ms. Muftah said. They said a plane crashed down in one of the streets.

Nearby, in the rebel-held city of Bayda, crowds cheered the news that French planes were attacking pro-Qaddafi forces in the east while allied missiles were falling in the west.

Sarkozy is bombing them! one rebel fighter told drivers passing his checkpoint on the way to Bayda. Theyre bombing Bab al-Aziziyah! other fighters yelled, referring to Colonel Qaddafis fortified compound in Tripoli.

Refugees fleeing the fighting in Benghazi were greeted by young men holding house keys, offering empty homes for shelter.

Abdul Qadi al-Faydi drove his family and two others in a Mitsubishi truck that was packed with what seemed like everything the families owned, including a refrigerator and a washing machine.

My entire street was destroyed, he said. Ahead of them, young men huddled in the back of a delivery truck, under floral blankets. A minivan shuttled a group of traumatized neighbors toward the Egyptian border. As they entered Bayda, they were met by young men cheering and chanting, as if victory were at hand.

One, two, three, a group chanted in English. Thanks, Sarkozy!

An article on March 20 about American and European military strikes against Libyan government forces described incorrectly three Navy submarines stationed in the Mediterranean, which were among 11 American warships that had fired the initial salvo of cruise missiles at Libyan targets. Two submarines, the Scranton and the Providence, are fast-attack submarines; the third, the Florida, is a guided-missile submarine. Not one is a ballistic missile submarine, which is capable of launching long-range missiles equipped with nuclear warheads.

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Allies Open Air Assault on Qaddafis Forces in Libya - The ...

TRIPOLI. (Reuters) - Libyan authorities have arrested a suspected al Qaeda leader who fled from the eastern city of Derna, once a jihadist bastion, a source in the attorney generals office said on Friday.

Abdel Qader Azuz was arrested in the western city of Misrata and then brought to the capital Tripoli the source said. No other details were immediately available.

Azuz was one of the senior militants in Derna, according to Libyan officials. The city has been long a hotspot for Islamist militants. Many had fled Libya to escape persecution by Muammar Gaddafi and to fight in Afghanistan, then returned home after the dictator was toppled in 2011.

Eastern military forces allied to Khalifa Haftar, which control eastern Libya, have seized much of Derna in a military campaign that officials say is almost over.

Libyan security forces arrested two weeks ago a suspected leading member of Islamic State, Khalifa al-Barq, in the militant groups former stronghold of Sirt

Al Qaeda and Islamic State have been using Libya as a base for attacks exploiting the security vacuum and chaos created by the fall of Gaddafi.

Reporting by Ahmed Elumami, Ayman Salhi and Ulf Laessing; editing by Larry King

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Libya arrests suspected al Qaeda leader, source says | Reuters

The protracted political crisis that started in 2011 with demonstrations leading to the fall of long-time Libyan leaderMuammar Gaddafihas developed into an armed conflict, forcing tens of thousands of families into displacement, and driving over a million people to depend on aid to survive as they are unable to afford the most basic things.

The UN Humanitarian/Resident Coordinator for Libya, Maria Ribeiro and Dr. Milad Al Taher, Minister of Local Governance, launched the planat an event in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, alongsideFayez al-Sarraj, President of the Presidency Council, and Dr. Ghassan Salame, head of theUNSupport Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).

Years of instability and insecurity have taken a toll on the wellbeing of many children, women and men in Libya. Each passing year, people struggle to withstand the impact of a crisis that has destabilized the country, put them in harms way, and ravaged the economy. said Ms. Ribeiro.

In the foreword to the HRP, Ms. Ribeiro stressed:Libya is now producing well over one million barrels of oil a day. However, this has not yet translated into tangible benefits for people.Many Libyans get poorer every year. Basic health and education services decay, and frustrated citizens cannot understand why oil production and increased government revenue does not lead to improved living standards, security and well-being for all in Libya.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), today, some 823,000 people, including around 248,000 children, are still in need of humanitarian assistance. This includes internally displaced persons and returnees, conflict-affected people, host communities and refugees and migrants who face grave human rights violations and abuse in the absence of rule of law.

The majority of people in need are in highly populated urban areas in the western and eastern regions of Libya. However, people with the most critical and severe needs are in the coastal area of Sirt and in the southern parts of the country (Murzuq, Sebha and Alkufra) where access is difficult due to violence and instability.

The funds required in the 2019 HRP are meant to provide food, health care, protection especially from buried explosive hazards which threaten the lives of entire communities, water and sanitation services, shelter, basic household items, and emergency education support for the most vulnerable.

In terms of food, the plan aims to provide immediate life-saving food supplies, but also support longer term recovery with the distribution of seeds, tools and other inputs for farming and fishing communities.

If adequately funded, humanitarian agencies will set up emergency medical teams and dispatch mobile teams to areas where medical staff is limited, to reinforce disease surveillance and control.

Water and sanitation is a high priority in detention centres which are crowded and unsanitary, schools in marginalized areas and camps for internally displaced people and refugees. Families in need of shelter will receive construction materials but also cash assistance in the form of emergency grants, rental subsidies and actual cash.

Ultimately, the future of Libya is very much in the hands of the Libyans and many efforts are ongoing in this regard, said Ms. do Valle Ribeiro. But right now, while people are suffering, it is absolutely critical that the international community work together with national partners to make sure vulnerable people are supported and protected.

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Libya: $202 million needed to bring life-saving aid to half a ...

The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatars plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official.

The Qatari assistance to fighters viewed as hostile by the United States demonstrates the Obama administrations continuing struggles in dealing with the Arab Spring uprisings, as it tries to support popular protest movements while avoiding American military entanglements. Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests.

To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience, said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University. If you rely on a country that doesnt have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control.

He said that Qatar would not have gone through with the arms shipments if the United States had resisted them, but other current and former administration officials said Washington had little leverage at times over Qatari officials. They march to their own drummer, said a former senior State Department official. The White House and State Department declined to comment.

During the frantic early months of the Libyan rebellion, various players motivated by politics or profit including an American arms dealer who proposed weapons transfers in an e-mail exchange with a United States emissary later killed in Benghazi sought to aid those trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi.

But after the White House decided to encourage Qatar and on a smaller scale, the United Arab Emirates to ship arms to the Libyans, President Obama complained in April 2011 to the emir of Qatar that his country was not coordinating its actions in Libya with the United States, the American officials said. The president made the point to the emir that we needed transparency about what Qatar was doing in Libya, said a former senior administration official who had been briefed on the matter.

About that same time, Mahmoud Jibril, then the prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, expressed frustration to administration officials that the United States was allowing Qatar to arm extremist groups opposed to the new leadership, according to several American officials. They, like nearly a dozen current and former White House, diplomatic, intelligence, military and foreign officials, would speak only on the condition of anonymity for this article.

The administration has never determined where all of the weapons, paid for by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, went inside Libya, officials said. Qatar is believed to have shipped by air and sea small arms, including machine guns, automatic rifles, and ammunition, for which it has demanded reimbursement from Libyas new government. Some of the arms since have been moved from Libya to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mali, where radical jihadi factions have imposed Shariah law in the northern part of the country, the former Defense Department official said. Others have gone to Syria, according to several American and foreign officials and arms traders.

Although NATO provided air support that proved critical for the Libyan rebels, the Obama administration wanted to avoid getting immersed in a ground war, which officials feared could lead the United States into another quagmire in the Middle East.

As a result, the White House largely relied on Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, two small Persian Gulf states and frequent allies of the United States. Qatar, a tiny nation whose natural gas reserves have made it enormously wealthy, for years has tried to expand its influence in the Arab world. Since 2011, with dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa coming under siege, Qatar has given arms and money to various opposition and militant groups, chiefly Sunni Islamists, in hopes of cementing alliances with the new governments. Officials from Qatar and the emirates would not comment.

After discussions among members of the National Security Council, the Obama administration backed the arms shipments from both countries, according to two former administration officials briefed on the talks.

American officials say that the United Arab Emirates first approached the Obama administration during the early months of the Libyan uprising, asking for permission to ship American-built weapons that the United States had supplied for the emirates use. The administration rejected that request, but instead urged the emirates to ship weapons to Libya that could not be traced to the United States.

The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons, said one former official. We told them its O.K. to ship other weapons.

For its part, Qatar supplied weapons made outside the United States, including French- and Russian-designed arms, according to people familiar with the shipments.

But the American support for the arms shipments from Qatar and the emirates could not be completely hidden. NATO air and sea forces around Libya had to be alerted not to interdict the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and the emirates, American officials said.

Concerns in Washington soon rose about the groups Qatar was supporting, officials said. A debate over what to do about the weapons shipments dominated at least one meeting of the so-called Deputies Committee, the interagency panel consisting of the second-highest ranking officials in major agencies involved in national security. There was a lot of concern that the Qatar weapons were going to Islamist groups, one official recalled.

The Qataris provided weapons, money and training to various rebel groups in Libya. One militia that received aid was controlled by Adel Hakim Belhaj, then leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who was held by the C.I.A. in 2004 and is now considered a moderate politician in Libya. It is unclear which other militants received the aid.

Nobody knew exactly who they were, said the former defense official. The Qataris, the official added, are supposedly good allies, but the Islamists they support are not in our interest.

No evidence has surfaced that any weapons went to Ansar al-Shariah, an extremist group blamed for the Benghazi attack.

The case of Marc Turi, the American arms merchant who had sought to provide weapons to Libya, demonstrates other challenges the United States faced in dealing with Libya. A dealer who lives in both Arizona and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Turi sells small arms to buyers in the Middle East and Africa, relying primarily on suppliers of Russian-designed weapons in Eastern Europe.

In March 2011, just as the Libyan civil war was intensifying, Mr. Turi realized that Libya could be a lucrative new market, and applied to the State Department for a license to provide weapons to the rebels there, according to e-mails and other documents he has provided. (American citizens are required to obtain United States approval for any international arms sales.)

He also e-mailed J. Christopher Stevens, then the special representative to the Libyan rebel alliance. The diplomat said he would share Mr. Turis proposal with colleagues in Washington, according to e-mails provided by Mr. Turi. Mr. Stevens, who became the United States ambassador to Libya, was one of the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11.

Mr. Turis application for a license was rejected in late March 2011. Undeterred, he applied again, this time stating only that he planned to ship arms worth more than $200 million to Qatar. In May 2011, his application was approved. Mr. Turi, in an interview, said that his intent was to get weapons to Qatar and that what the U.S. government and Qatar allowed from there was between them.

Two months later, though, his home near Phoenix was raided by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Administration officials say he remains under investigation in connection with his arms dealings. The Justice Department would not comment.

Mr. Turi said he believed that United States officials had shut down his proposed arms pipeline because he was getting in the way of the Obama administrations dealings with Qatar. The Qataris, he complained, imposed no controls on who got the weapons. They just handed them out like candy, he said.

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U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis Hands

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A force of several dozen armed private security contractors from Russia operated until last month in a part of Libya that is under the control of regional leader Khalifa Haftar, the head of the firm that hired the contractors told Reuters.

FILE PHOTO: General Khalifa Haftar, commander in the Libyan National Army (LNA), leaves after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, November 29, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

It is the clearest signal to date that Moscow is prepared to back up its public diplomatic support for Haftar even at the risk of alarming Western governments already irked at Russias intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad.

Haftar is opposed to a U.N.-backed government which Western states see as the best chance of restoring stability in Libya. But some Russian policy-makers see the Libyan as a strongman who can end the six years of anarchy that followed the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.

The presence of the military contractors was, according to the head of the firm, a commercial arrangement. It is unlikely though to have been possible without Moscows approval, according to people who work in the industry in Russia.

Oleg Krinitsyn, owner of private Russian firm RSB-group, said he sent the contractors to eastern Libya last year and they were pulled out in February having completed their mission.

In an interview with Reuters, he said their task was to remove mines from an industrial facility near the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, in an area that Haftars forces had liberated from Islamist rebels.

He declined to say who hired his firm to provide the contractors, where they were operating or what the industrial facility was. He did not say if the operation had been approved by the U.N.-backed government, which most states view as the sovereign ruler of Libya.

Asked whether the mission had official blessing from Moscow, Krinitsyn said his firm did not work with the Russian defence ministry, but was consulting with the Russian foreign ministry.

The contractors did not take part in combat, Krinitsyn said, but they were armed with weapons they obtained in Libya. He declined to specify what type of weapons. A U.N. arms embargo prohibits the import of weapons to Libya unless it is under the control of the U.N.-backed government.

Krinitsyn said his contractors were ready to strike back in case of an attack.

If were under assault we enter the battle, of course, to protect our lives and the lives of our clients, Krinitsyn said. According to military science, a counterattack must follow an attack. That means we would have to destroy the enemy.

Military and government officials in eastern Libya said they were not aware of the presence of the contractors, while Haftar did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials in Western Libya, where the U.N.-backed government is based, were not immediately available to comment. The Russian foreign ministry said it was working on a response to Reuters questions bit had not commented by Friday.

Underscoring Libyas volatility, Haftars forces have this week been fighting to regain control over the Mediterranean oil terminals of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, which a rival faction seized earlier this month.

Russia has a record of using private military contractors as an extension of its own military.

In Syria, military contractors have been widely used in combat roles in conjunction with Russian regular forces and their Syrian allies, according to multiple accounts given to Reuters by people involved in the operations.Moscow has not acknowledged using private contractors in Syria.

Russian security companies do not reveal the background of people they hire but the contractors usually are special forces veterans.

Krinitsyn, the owner of the company which hired the contractors for Libya, was an officer of the Russian border guard service based in Tajikistan, on the border with Afghanistan, where he said he gained battlefield experience.

Krinitsyn said some of the contractors he hired for Libya has previously worked in Syria, though not in combat roles.

He declined to say how many contractors were involved in the mission in Libya, citing commercial secrecy. However, he said that in general, a de-mining operation of this type would require around 50 mine clearance experts and around the same number for their security detail.

Haftar has been seeking outside help to consolidate his control over parts of Libya. Russia has shown a willingness to engage with him that contrasts with the more cautious approach of Western governments.

Haftar visited Moscow in November last year and met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In December, Haftar went on board a Russian aircraft carrier off the Libyan coast and spoke with the Russian defence minister via videolink. In recent weeks, Russia has taken in 100 of Haftars wounded fighters for medical treatment.

Moscow also received Haftars rival, Fayez Serraj, the head of the UN-backed government, for talks this month.

President Vladimir Putin, newly confident from the Russian military intervention in Syria, is anxious to restore stability in Libya. But foreign diplomats familiar with Russian thinking say there is so far no consensus on how to achieve that.

They say the foreign ministry wants Haftar to join forces with the U.N.-backed government. But the diplomats say there is a more hawkish camp, centred on the Russian defence ministry and some people in the Kremlin, which favours backing Haftar to establish control over the whole of Libya.

Krinitsyn, the contractors boss, said that while in Libya his employees had run into a group of local militants. He said the militants were initially hostile, but became friendly when they realised the outsiders were Russians.

It was an uncomfortable situation but the image created by Putin in Syria played a positive role. We realized that Russia is welcomed in Libya more than other countries are, he said.

Additional reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli in Benghazi, Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli and Christian Lowe in Moscow; Editing by Giles Elgood

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