A Libyan rebel attack in Tripoli that targeted top regime officials “seriously injured” a high-ranking member of Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces, a senior rebel leader said yesterday.

The claim from the vice president of the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Ali al-Isawi, following his meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, came amid rumours that rebel forces had infiltrated the Libyan capital.

“Yesterday in Tripoli, there was an attack on an operations centre of top regime officials, including Seif al-Islam Gaddafi,” the son of the Libyan leader, Mr Isawi told journalists.

“One person was left seriously injured,” he said, identifying the person as a high-ranking official within the regime security services.

Mr Isawi added that the rebels “are currently advancing from the western mountains towards Tripoli”.

Mr Frattini said the attack on Thursday “shows that even in Tripoli, (the rebels) have the capacity to respond forcefully”, to the regime’s military moves.

The Italian Foreign Minister characterised the rebels’ Tripoli assault as a “rocket attack against an operations centre that was probably found concealed in a Tripoli hotel”.

The attack was aimed at “top officials of the regime, including Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif, and the head of the secret service, Abdallah al-Senoussi,” Mr Frattini added.

As the rebels boast of gains in both the east and west of the country, Col Gaddafi has ruled out talks with them, saying theirs is a “lost cause”.

The rebels say they have chased the bulk of Col Gaddafi’s forces from Brega in the east and are poised for advances towards the capital from Misurata and their other western enclave in the Nafusa Mountains, southwest of Tripoli.

Meanwhile Nato has authorised civilian aircraft to use an air corridor between the rebel headquarters of Benghazi in the east and the Nafusa mountains in the west, officials said yesterday.

“It started about a month ago. There are almost daily passenger flights, according to requirements, and they run with the permission of Nato,” an official in charge of flights said.

“We can call this an air bridge,” said the official who declined to be identified.

A road that cuts through fields is used as a runway, according to an AFP correspondent who toured the area but cannot identify the location for security reasons.

Less than a mile long and just 12 metres wide, the runway has a centre-line and yellow markings to signal its start and end, and is used as an ordinary road when there is no air traffic.

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