Qaddafi Force In Tatters After Airstrike

The Washington Post reports:

TIKAH, Libya — Twenty miles outside Benghazi, the wreckage of Moammar Gaddafi’s army dots the land.

There are crushed tanks, their turrets pulled apart. A few feet away, amid the smoldering debris of war, nine bodies lay on a field of flowers, the faces blackened and the eyes hollowed. The smell of burning rubber melded with the stench of rotting flesh.

Allied warplanes fired missiles here early Sunday, witnesses said, and by dawn, the idyllic countryside was an apocalyptic landscape. The airstrikes, led by France, carved a trail of devastation that stretched more than 15 miles along the highway to Ajdabiya, another city under siege by forces loyal to Gaddafi.

The destruction brought a new hope to Libyan rebels seeking to end Gaddafi’s 41-year-long rule. Less than 24 hours earlier, they were on their heels as Gaddafi’s tanks and trucks pushed into Benghazi, the cradle of Libya’s month-old rebellion, raining a barrage of artillery and rockets that transformed the city of 1 million people into a lifeless shadow of itself.

A spokesman for the rebels told the television network al-Jazeera on Sunday that more than 8,000 Libyans who had joined their movement had been killed in the revolt. There was anger among residents and rebel fighters at what they called the international community’s slowness in authorizing a no-fly zone and other measures to stop the growing tide of civilian casualties.

But after the missiles landed, such sentiments evaporated.

“The French planes did this,” yelled Walid Abdsalam Houas, a 25-year-old fighter who waved his Kalashnikov in triumph. “I feel so good. This is the best feeling I have had in a long time.”

Click here to read more.