Nato warplanes hammered Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy's compound with their heaviest air strikes yet today after the United States said he would "inevitably" be forced from power.
The shock wave from the strikes was so powerful that plaster fell from the ceilings in a hotel where foreign reporters were staying, about 2km from Col Gadafy's compound.
A Nato official said the strikes hit a military facility that had been used to attack civilians. A Libyan government spokesman said three people had been killed and 150 wounded, and that the casualties were local residents.
"It is definitely, in terms of one target, the largest and most concentrated attack we have done to date," said the Nato official in Brussels." "This complex is where members of the Gadafy regime, not only military, but hit squads, were based out of in the early days of the violent suppression of the popular uprising, and it has been active ever since," the official said.
Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said the strikes had targeted a compound of the Popular Guards, a tribally based military detachment.
But he said the compound had been emptied of people and "useful material" in anticipation of an attack. "This is another night of bombing and killing by Nato," Ibrahim told reporters.
Led by France, Britain and the United States, Nato warplanes have been bombing Libya since the United Nations authorised "all necessary measures" to protect civilians from Col Gadafy's forces in the country's civil war.
Critics argue Nato has overstepped its mandate and is trying directly to engineer Col Gadafy's fall. Rebels, however, have complained Western forces are not doing enough to break the Libyan leader's army.
"We have degraded his war machine and prevented a humanitarian catastrophe," President Barack Obama and British prime minister David Cameron wrote in Britain's Times newspaper. "And we will continue to enforce the UN resolutions with our allies until they are completely complied with."
UN Security Council 1973, passed on March 17th, established a no-fly zone and called for a ceasefire, an end to attacks on civilians, respect for human rights and efforts to meet Libyans' aspirations.
Col Gadafy denies his forces target civilians and describes the rebels as criminals and religious extremists.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told a London news conference yesterday: "We do believe that time is working against Gadafy, that he cannot re-establish control over the country." She said the opposition had organised a legitimate and credible interim council that was committed to democracy.
"Their military forces are improving and when Gadafy inevitably leaves, a new Libya stands ready to move forward," she said. "We have a lot of confidence in what our joint efforts are producing."
The United States bolstered the credentials of the rebel National Transitional Council as a potential government-in-waiting today when a senior US envoy invited it to set up a representative office in Washington.
"A formal invitation for the council to establish a representative in Washington DC is a milestone in our relationship and I am pleased that they accepted our offer," said US Assistant Secretary for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, who was meeting rebel leaders in rebel-held Benghazi.
Unlike France, Italy and Qatar, the United States has not established formal diplomatic ties with the rebels.