Two journalists held hostage by the Taliban for 18 months in Afghanistan have arrived home in France to an emotional welcome.

Nato warplanes have bombarded targets in Tripoli with more than 20 air strikes around Muammar Gaddafi’s residential compound early today, in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing in the Libyan capital since the Western alliance launched its air campaign against his forces.

France’s government says it will send a small number of military liaison officers to Libya to work with opposition forces, but no ground troops.

Holding out under a rain of shelling and sniper fire, rebels in Misrata, their last major foothold in western Libya, fought Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in close-quarter battles in the city centre.

Nato’s secretary general has said he expects member nations to provide extra ground-attack aircraft soon to strike Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya.

France is to scale back its forces in Ivory Coast after the capture of former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Ivory Coast’s democratically elected leader says his forces will not capture the entrenched incumbent who has been holed up for days in an underground bunker at the presidential residence, and instead will wait for him to run out of food and water.

UNITED NATIONS peacekeepers have surrounded the “last defenders” of Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo, after a week of heavy fighting to unseat him.

IVORY Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was negotiating the terms of his departure from power last night following a fierce assault by forces loyal to his presidential rival backed by UN and French helicopter airstrikes.