NATO clinches deal to take over Libya military ops

NATO clinched agreement on Thursday to take over command of all allied military operations in Libya from the United States after days of sometimes heated wrangling with Muslim member Turkey.

"Compromise has been reached in principle in a very short time," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara. "The operation will be handed over to NATO completely."

The deal came after a four-way telephone conference between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the foreign ministers of Turkey, France and Britain.

Earlier, Turkish leaders had cast new suspicions on the motives behind Western intervention in Libya, suggesting action was driven by oil and mineral wealth rather than a desire to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

Air-to-ground missile

A French warplane destroyed a Libyan military aircraft with an air-to-ground missile as it was landing at Misrata air base in western Libya on Thursday, France's armed forces said.

An armed forces spokesman said a patrol of Rafale fighters -- part of the Western coalition force carrying out a U.N.-mandated intervention to protect civilians caught in a counter-offensive by Muammar Gaddafi's troops against rebels -- spotted the Libyan plane breaching a no-fly order.

"The French patrol carried out an air-to-ground strike with an AASM weapon just after the plane had landed at the Misrata air base," the spokesman said, reading from an armed forces statement.

Western warplanes struck deeper inside Libya on Thursday after Gaddafi's tanks re-entered the town of Misrata overnight and besieged its main hospital.

The Libyan government said the civilian death toll from five days of coalition air strikes had reached almost 100 and accused Western governments of fighting on the side of the rebels.

Mussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, also said the Libyan government believed Western forces were planning to attack its broadcasting infrastructure, possibly later on Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, France's armed forces said French planes had struck a central Libyan air base in the early hours of the morning in a fifth night of bombardments by Western powers against Gaddafi's military.

Around 15 French planes had been deployed on Wednesday and a dozen overnight, leading to missile strikes on an air base some 155 miles (250 km) inland from Libya's Mediterranean coast.

Anti-aircraft gunfire and several explosions were heard in the Libyan capital Tripoli earlier Thursday in what the state TV reported as the second wave of airstrikes in the day.

Witnesses reported a huge blast at a military base in the Tajura residential neighborhood 32 kilometers (20 miles) east of the capital, while anti-aircraft fire was heard as warplanes thundered over Tripoli.

Libyan officials took journalists to a Tripoli hospital on Thursday to see what they said were the charred bodies of 18 military personnel and civilians killed by Western warplanes or missiles overnight.

Misrata

Forces loyal to Gaddafi seized control of Misrata's port on Wednesday, stranding thousands of Egyptian and sub-Saharan African migrant workers, who were seeking evacuation by sea, the resident said.

In the fifth day since the launch of the military campaign, Western warplanes have so far failed to stop Gaddafi's tanks shelling opposition-held towns or dislodge his armour from a strategic junction in the east.

Gaddafi's tanks rolled back into Misrata under the cover of darkness and began shelling the area near the main hospital, residents and rebels said, resuming their attack after their guns were silenced in daylight hours by Western airstrikes.

Government snipers in the city, Libya's third largest, were undeterred by the bombing raids though and had carried on firing indiscriminately throughout, residents said. A rebel spokesman said the snipers had killed 16 people.

"Government tanks are closing in on Misrata hospital and shelling the area," said a doctor in Misrata who was briefly reached by phone before the line was cut off.

It was impossible to independently verify the reports.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that coalition airstrikes against Libya had been a "success" and would continue.

France's defense minister, meanwhile, said intercepted communications showed that some forces under Gaddafi are wavering in their support of the Libyan leader.

"We will continue with the airstrikes," Juppe told RTL radio, adding that the strikes were "only targeting military sites and nothing else."

The U.N. Security Council resolution he said, "stipulates that the coalition has all means available to protect the civilians. What's threatening the population today is the tanks and artillery," he said in an interview with Le Figaro.