Civilian casualties mount in the war against Libya

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On Sunday night at least 18 large explosions were heard in or near Sirte, apparently part of the coalition's campaign of attacking air defences and other military targets. But reports that the city had fallen to the Benghazi-based rebels were evidently wrong – and fuelled Libyan fury at the satellite TV channels that claimed it had.

It was firmly in government hands and its people defiant. "I saw death with my own eyes," said Fawzi Imish, whose house and every other in his seafront street had its windows shattered by a Tomahawk missile strike in the early hours of the morning. "It was just intended to terrify people. And if the rebels come here, we will receive them with bullets."

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Residents of Sirte's beachfront area protested angrily at an attack on Saturday night which killed three men picnicking on a breakwater surrounding a small harbour, packed with wooden fishing boats abandoned by their Egyptian and Tunisian crews when the uprising began last month. Fragments of the bomb were embedded in a shallow crater at the end of the stone jetty – which had no conceivable military use.

On Khartoum Street, where one of the dead men lived, a woman could be heard wailing inconsolably as grim-faced relatives arrived to pay their respects.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/28/libya-sirte-gaddafi-loyalists-rebels

Khamis Mohammed, a Sirte University lecturer, accused Nato of deliberately targeting innocent civilians and supporting "mercenaries and terrorists" in the east.

"Our grandfathers fought Mussolini and we will fight and live free in our land," he said. "If Nato really cared about civilians it and the UN would send a mission here to find out who is really the aggressor."

Hatred for the Benghazi rebels has been fuelled by an incident on Sunday when pro-Gaddafi loyalists taking part in a peace march were confronted near Bin Jawad and three of them reportedly shot and killed, despite carrying white flags and olive branches. But according to some accounts armed volunteers were in one bus at the rear of the convoy.