“They (NATO) are targeting civilians ...

Three children among 15 dead in new NATO raid

        A NATO airstrike early Monday on a large family compound belonging to a close associate of Muammar Qaddafi has killed at least 15 people, including three children, west of Tripoli, Libya’s government said.

          Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said alliance bombs struck the compound belonging to Khoweildi Al-Hamidi outside the city of Surman, some 60 km west of Tripoli, around 4 a.m. local time Monday.

Ibrahim said Al-Hamidi, a former military officer who took part in the 1969 coup that brought Qaddafi to power, escaped unharmed but that three children were among those killed, two of them Al-Hamidi’s grandchildren.

          “They (NATO) are targeting civilians ... the logic is intimidation,” Ibrahim said. “They want Libyans to give up the fight ... they want to break our spirit.” Foreign journalists based in the Libyan capital were taken by government officials to the walled compound, where the main two-story buildings had been blasted to rubble. A pair of massive craters could be seen in the dusty ground, and rescue service workers with sniffer dogs were searching the rubble in search of people. The smell of smoke was still thick in the air.

          Journalists were later taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Sabratha, where medical workers showed them the bodies of at least 10 people, including those of two children, said to be killed in the strike. Some of the bodies were charred beyond recognition, while others had been half blown apart.

          “NATO is endangering its credibility; we cannot risk killing civilians,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters ahead of an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg due to discuss ways to aid fighters opposed to Qaddafi.

In 2 weeks of Yemen clashes ‘140 dead’

           At least 140 people have been killed in two weeks of clashes between Yemeni security forces and suspected Al Qaeda gunmen in the Southern city of Zinjibar, a military official said on Monday.

          “At least 80 security officials including soldiers have been killed and more than 200 wounded in clashes with Al Qaeda militants since Zinjibar fell under the (Al Qaeda) network’s grip” in late May, said the military official.

          Security officials say the militants are Al Qaeda fighters but the political Opposition accuses the government of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh of inventing a jihadist threat to head off Western pressure on his 33-year rule.