Nato continues Tripoli air attacks

Nato airstrikes have targeted Muammar Gaddafi’s sprawling Tripoli compound in a new round of daylight raids.

Nato’s top official said Gaddafi’s fall was only a matter of time and reiterated that the alliance would send no ground troops.

Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “For Gaddafi, it is no longer a question of if he goes but when he goes.”

But when Gaddafi goes, Mr Fogh Rasmussen said, it would be up to the United Nations and not Nato to usher Libya peacefully toward democracy.

“We do not see a lead role for Nato in Libya once this crisis is over,” he said. “We see the United Nations playing a lead role in the post-Gaddafi, post-conflict scenario.”

Alliance officials warned for days that they were increasing the scope and intensity of their air campaign to oust Gaddafi after more than 40 years in power.

Nato is backing the rebel insurgency, which has seized swathes of eastern Libya and pockets in the regime’s stronghold in the west since it began in February, inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

British and French attack helicopters struck for the first time inside Libya over the weekend and the alliance flew 66 “strike sorties” on Tuesday, its most intense barrage yet in the conflict.

Some 6,850 people, nearly all of them Libyans, have streamed across the border from Libya to Tunisia since Monday to flee the Nato raids as well as fighting between the rebels and government forces, according to the Tunisian Defence Ministry.

In Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital, Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez became the latest European official to visit and bolster the opposition forces.

Mr Fogh Rasmussen has said he will use a two-day meeting of alliance defence ministers to push for broader participation by allies. He wants more countries from the 28-nation alliance to share the costs and risks involved in the campaign.

Meanwhile Gaddafi promised once more to fight to the death.

He was last seen in a brief appearance on state television in late May. He has mostly been in hiding since Nato strikes in April targeted one of his homes.