Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said time is running out for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, even as the strongman’s forces laying siege to Misurata intensified their assault on the city’s lifeline port.
The Red Cross said meanwhile it delivered a shipment of humanitarian aid including medical supplies and baby food to Misurata, the rebel-held western city that has been besieged by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces for weeks.
It expressed concerns about reports Gaddafi’s forces had used helicopters bearing the Red Cross emblem to drop mines into Misurata’s harbour.
Nato secretary-general Rasmussen said meanwhile that “the game is over for Col Gaddafi” who “should realise sooner rather than later that there’s no future for him or his regime.
“We have stopped Gaddafi in his tracks. His time is running out. He’s more and more isolated,” he told CNN late Sunday.
Mr Rasmussen expressed optimism Col Gaddafi would ultimately lose his decades-old grip on power given the “wind of change” sweeping the Arab world, the death of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and mounting pressure on the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Nato has been bombing Libyan military targets since March in a bid to prevent Col Gaddafi from killing scores of his own people in urban areas as set out under a UN resolution to protect civilians.
Fighting has been raging in and around Misurata, a make-or-break city in the Libyan conflict about 200 kilometres east of the capital.
The latest shipment of aid to land in the port yesterday morning was carrying surgical kits, spare parts to repair water and electrical supply systems, and 8,000 jars of baby food, the Red Cross said in a statement.
Misurata is seen as key to the Libyan conflict, which broke out in mid-February after Colonel Gaddafi’s security forces waged a bloody crackdown on protests inspired by regime-changing movements in Tunisia and Egypt.
Nato said yesterday that in latest sorties its warplanes hit five rocket launchers, one self-propelled artillery piece, one truck-mounted gun and three buildings “hosting active shooters” in the vicinity of Misurata.
It also hit 26 ammunition storages and 16 “vehicle storages” near Hun, eight military vehicles near Brega, two military operational facilities near Tripoli and four ammunition dumps near Zintan.