Libyan govt forces bombard Misrata

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BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters): Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fired at least 100 Grad rockets into Misrata Saturday, a rebel spokesman said, in a third day of heavy bombardment of the besieged rebel-held city. "They fired Grads at an industrial area this morning, at least one hundred rockets were fired. No casualties are reported," Abdelbasset Abu Mzereiq told Reuters by telephone. Misrata is the only major bastion of the rebels in the western part of Libya. Pro-Gaddafi forces have laid siege to it after the city rose up in revolt along with others against Gaddafi's four-decade rule in mid-February. More than 100 rockets landed in the city Friday and rebels said government forces had reached the city center. Human Rights Watch said it had evidence Gaddafi's forces were firing cluster munitions into residential areas of Misrata. It published photographs of what it said were Spanish-produced cluster bombs, which release grenades designed to explode into fragments and kill the maximum number of people. Mussa Ibrahim, a Libyan government spokesman, dismissed the allegations, saying: "I challenge them to prove it." Late Friday, an aid ship brought nearly 1,200 Misrata evacuees to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, just a fraction of those stranded in the city and desperate to escape, an official of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), who was on board the Greek ship, said. There were likely to be 8,000-10,000 migrants who still needed to be evacuated from the city, Jeremy Haslam, an IOM aid coordinator said. The continued bombardment made it impossible to get into many areas of Misrata, he said. "We threw out the textbook, basically. We couldn't get to the most vulnerable, those who need to get out fastest, because it was too dangerous," Haslam said. Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the military situation on the ground in Libya had reached stalemate three weeks into the war, but said he expected NATO allies to force Gaddafi from power eventually. Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy published a joint newspaper article vowing to continue their military campaign until Gaddafi leaves power. They acknowledged their aim of regime change went beyond protecting civilians, as allowed by a U.N. Security Council resolution, but said Libyans would never be safe under Gaddafi. Obama told an interview with the Associated Press: "You now have a stalemate on the ground militarily, but Gaddafi is still getting squeezed in all kinds of other ways. He is running out of money, he is running out of supplies. The noose is tightening and he is becoming more and more isolated." A rebel spokesman in Misrata said pro-Gaddafi forces had on Friday also shelled the road leading to the port, a lifeline for trapped civilians and the main entry point for international aid agencies, killing eight people.