Air Attack On Libya

The United States and its Western allies launched air attacks on Libyan targets on Saturday, in what U.S. President Barack Obama described as the work of a "broad coalition" to protect "a threatened people" against ruler Moammar Gadhafi's forces.

"We are answering the calls of a threatened people and we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world," Obama said in a statement from Brazil, during a visit to Latin America.

"Make no mistake, today we are part of a broad coalition," Obama said. The Arab League has backed action against Gadhafi's forces, and while no Arab forces have joined the attack so far, "officials expect Arab countries will publicly announce their participation soon," the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon said 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. and British ships and submarines had been fired at 20 targets. British jets also joined the attack, the government said early Sunday. The Western coalition is targeting Libyan air defences, especially around Tripoli and the west Libyan city of Misrata.

"This is the first phase of what will likely be a multi-phase operation," U.S. Vice Admiral William Gortney, director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said at a briefing in Washington after Obama spoke.

"These strikes were carefully coordinated with our coalition partners," Gortney said, adding that most of the targets — in what's being called Operation Odyssey Dawn — were on the Mediterranean coast and that information was still coming in because it was night.
Responding on Libyan state television to the attacks, Gadhafi warned that the coalition action has turned the Mediterranean region and North Africa into a "ground of war."
Gadhafi said he would open his country's military stores to "arm all the masses with all types of weapons" in defence of the country against a "colonial crusader."
An Al Jazeera reporter in the rebel capital Benghazi, meanwhile, said that people there were firing guns in the air to celebrate the international attacks.

Al Jazeera also reported that one of the targets hit was a military college near Misrata, where it said Gadhafi's forces were believed to be based.

Libyan TV, controlled by the government, said the attacks had killed 48 people and wounded 150.