Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi has said – in a short audio message broadcast on state television Friday evening – that NATO bombing will not touch him “because he’s in the hearts of millions of Libyans”.
NATO strikes had reached Thursday morning Colonel’s vast residential complex, killing three people and injuring another 27, according to the official government statement. On the night of Friday to Saturday, six new explosions were heard around the Libyan capital, eyewitnesses reported.
Gadhafi’s audio message was a response to the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who considered “credible” some statements attributed to the bishop of Tripoli that Gadhafi would be wounded and he would have left Libyan capital.
In an interview with Radio France International, the bishop of Tripoli, Giovanni Martinelli, however, denied on Friday evening that he uttered these words. “What the Italian Foreign Minister said is not true because I did not say that the Libyan leader was hurt or that he would have left Tripoli”.
16 civilians killed
While Gadhafi has ensured that he feels good, Libyan authorities have stressed that the NATO raids have made new victims among civilian population. At least 16 civilians were killed in a NATO air attack on Brega, a city located near a major eastern Libyan oil operations area controlled by government forces, announced Friday Tripoli TV stations, quoted by AFP and EFE.
TV stations Al-Libya and Al-Jamahiriya Made the same announcement, which can not be verified from independent sources.
Sources claim that most civilians left Brega due to the fighting between pro- and anti-Gadhafi forces.
NATO air raids, causing collateral civilian deaths were recorded on April 1 at Brega and April 7, in Brega and Ajdabiya. Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for the NATO operation, “Protection Unit”, refused to comment on Al-Libya announcement.