Libyan regime: 15 dead in airstrike on compound

Updated at 2:57 p.m. ET

SURMAN, Libya - Libya's government said a NATO airstrike west of Tripoli early Monday destroyed a large family compound belonging to a close associate of Muammar Qaddafi, killing at least 15 people, including three children.

A NATO spokesman confirmed to CBS News that the alliance did strike a "command and control node" in the area but only after "rigorous analysis and conducted persistent information surveillance reconnaissance over a prolonged time in that area" had shown it be a government structure.

"I cannot comment on the reports of civilian casualties," the spokesman told CBS News. "We watched it for a very long time. Based on this surveillance, we knew it was being used as a command and control center."

He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with NATO regulations.

Qaddafi's regime has repeatedly accused NATO of targeting civilians in an attempt to rally support against international intervention into Libya's civil war. The alliance insists it tries to avoid killing civilians.

Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said NATO bombs struck the compound belonging to Khoweildi al-Hamidi outside the city of Surman, some 40 miles west of Tripoli, around 4 a.m. local time Monday.

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NATO initially said it had not hit any targets in the Surman area overnight.

The commander of NATO's Libya operation, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, said the "strike will greatly degrade the Qaddafi regime's forces' ability to carry out their babaric assaults on the Libyan people."

"Wherever Qaddafi tries to hide his command and control centers, we will find them," he said.

NATO officials have repeatedly said the alliance does not target individuals. The spokesman said Monday he could not say whether the strike had caused civilian casualties.

Al-Hamidi is a longtime regime insider who took part in the 1969 coup that brought Qaddafi to power. He reportedly commanded a battalion that crushed rebels in the nearby western city of Zawiya in March, and his daughter is married to one of Qaddafi's sons, Saadi.

Ibrahim said al-Hamidi escaped the airstrikes unharmed but that three children, two of them al-Hamidi's grandchildren, were among the 15 people killed. Officials said he was inside a still-intact building at the time of the strike.

"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 at least two 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 scouring the rubble in search of people. The smell of smoke was still in the air.

Bombs also appeared to have ripped holes through the top of a large tent sheltering cars, smashing the floor and mangling vehicles inside. The windows were shattered in a circular sitting room containing old framed photos said to be of al-Hamidi, and a deer kept in an enclosure with other animals had a broken antler and was bleeding from the mouth.

Another building outside the compound, next to a communications tower, was also flattened, and walls were blown out of an adjacent house. A mosque across the street and a school next door were not damaged.

Journalists were later taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Sabratha, where medical workers showed them the bodies of about eight to 10 people, including those of two children, said to have been killed in the strike. Some of the bodies appeared charred, while others were in pieces. Portraits of Qaddafi hung on the hospital walls as armed men in military fatigues — some guards from the compound — roamed the hallways.

NATO, which has a mandate to protect Libyan civilians, has rejected government allegations that it targets civilians. However, mistakes have occurred.

The alliance acknowledged that one of its airstrikes on Sunday accidentally struck a residential neighborhood in the capital, killing civilians.

A coalition including France, Britain and the United States launched the first strikes against Qaddafi's forces under a United Nations resolution to protect civilians on March 19. NATO, which is joined by a number of Arab allies, assumed control of the air campaign over Libya on March 31.

From their de facto capital of Benghazi, the rebels have taken over much of the eastern half of the country. They also control pockets in the west, mainly around the port city of Misrata and in the Nafusa mountains south of Tripoli.

In Luxembourg, European Union foreign ministers condemned the Libyan regime, saying in a statement that "time is not on Qaddafi's side," and that the Libyan leader "has lost all legitimacy to remain in power."

The 27 foreign ministers also toughened the bloc's sanctions against the regime by adding six port authorities controlled by Qaddafi's forces to its asset-freeze list. The ports were not named.

In a similar move, the central bank of the United Arab Emirates ordered a freeze on the accounts of 19 Libyan individuals and institutions while an investigation of the funds is under way into possible links to Qaddafi's regime, according to local media.

The reports gave no further details, and officials at the UAE's central bank were not immediately available for comment.

[dontbelievenothing]

More war! More dead humans! More military industrial profits!

We don't really care how many innocents die in our reshaping of the world, the new world order where if you don't play by our rules, we simply kill you.

Obama, like Bush the Butcher of Baghdad before him, has turned murdering humans for profit into something really, really, evil and ugly.

The United States now owns the dubious honor of having murdered over ONE MILLION humans, many innocent women and children, in 2 faked wars started with the heinous government sponsored attack on New York and the Pentagon on 911.

We now rank second only to Adolf Hitler in outright genocide totals.

Our leaders are subhuman scum controlled by rich corrupt elite subhuman scum, the same kind of stuff you'd scrape off the bottom of your boots before walking into the house.

Everyone in Washington should be arrested for treason and genocide for profit.

There will be No justice and No truth until the ringleaders of the Bush/Cheney/Obama crime syndicate are finally exposed and indicted before the world, and made to pay for these crimes against humanity.

[DocD--2008]

Simple, if Lybia does not want civilians and kids killed, then stop putting them in concrete compounds with communication towers (aka command and control centers), and then they wont get killed. Use human shields and they will die.

And for those of you that are too stupid to think with your own brain, the US is NOT NATO. Go kiss Limbaughs ass like you want to do.

[WillMunny1]

NATO is there to protect the Lybian civilians from Qaddafi, but who is going to protect them from NATO and Obama?
I wonder how many they really killed this time and since they started this illegal war.

[cbsnacilbuper]

Washington (CNN) -- Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is expected to resign under pressure, perhaps in the next day or two, in the wake of the ongoing controversy over Operation Fast and Furious, two senior federal law enforcement sources said Monday.

In the operation, straw buyers were allowed to illegally purchase large numbers of weapons, some of which ended up in the hands of cartels in Mexico.

This is not going to end well when the truth comes out.

[cbsnacilbuper]

Liberals have sold their soles and integrity to Obama. How sad.

[cbsnacilbuper]

Why are we in Libya?

What threat are they to us?

[thechooch1]

cbsnacilbuper tell it to the families of those who lost their lives when Gaddhafi planned and bombed the Pan Am 747, killing all on board.

[cbsnacilbuper]

Really, that is the best you can do?

[uptothegills]

I do not think NATO is targeting civilians. However, I definitely think that Gaddhafi is being targeted. In any war civilians are going to be killed by accident. The war in Libya is a difficult one. At times it is impossible to determine who is a civilian and who is not. Part of that is due to the fact that the pro-Gaddhafi forces are imitating civilians. Moreover, part of it is due to the opposition forces often use weapons that have been seized after battles with the regime forces. Part of it is also the proximity of civilians to regime forces that conceal missile launchers, tanks and other weapons within a city such as Tripoli. The NATO alliance acknowledged that one of its air strikes on Sunday accidentally struck a residential neighborhood in the capital, killing civilians.

?.In Luxembourg, the European Union foreign ministers harshly condemned the Libyan regime, saying in a statement that "time is not on Qaddafi's side," and that the Libyan leader "has lost all legitimacy to remain in power?." Unfortunately many more civilians will die before Gaddafi is taken out of the picture.

[wfw3536]

Obama has us in another needless war, and he will not even own up to it. How sad all the peace activates will not say a word because it is Obama. I guess they are just hypocrites.

[countrycuz1]

The Obama administration needs to begin seriously considering trying to negotiate some sort of surrender to Qaddafi with which we can still maintain some semblance of national honor. The current White House hsould have no difficulty finding eager volunteers who would enjoy groveling in the name of America to the Libyan strongman!