Libyan officials took reporters to Surman, 70 km (45 miles) west of Tripoli, to the site of what they said was a NATO air strike on the home of Khouildi Hamidi, a member of Libya’s 12-strong Revolutionary Command Council, led by Gaddafi.
Rescue teams were looking for survivors while reporters visited the site. Reporters were then taken to a hospital in nearby Sabrata where they were shown nine bodies, including those of two children, plus some body parts, which the Libyan government said were all of people killed in the attack.
The state-run Jana news agency later reported on its website that eight children were among 19 people killed in the attack. The dead included members of Hamidi’s family, it said. The government said Hamidi himself was not hurt.
NATO said it had bombed a “legitimate military target — a command and control node” in the area, and it could not confirm whether civilians had been hurt. It said NATO does not target specific individuals.
“This strike will greatly degrade the Gaddafi regime forces’ ability to carry on their barbaric assault against the Libyan people,” Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian commander of NATO’s Libya operation, said in a statement.
If the Libyan government’s account of civilian deaths is confirmed, the incident could further complicate operations of the NATO-led military alliance, starting to feel the strain of a campaign that is taking longer and costing more than planned.
NATO acknowledged on Sunday for the first time that it had killed multiple civilians in Libya, when a strike intended to hit a missile site erred and destroyed a house in Tripoli. Bouchard said he regretted the loss of life in that incident, and a system failure may have knocked the weapon off course.