BENGHAZI, Libya: Loud explosions rocked Tripoli late Wednesday near the residence of Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi as global powers gathered for talks on mapping out a democratic future for the nation.
The first blast shook central Tripoli around 2000 GMT, followed 15 minutes later by a stronger explosion near a hotel housing foreign journalists.
Regime spokesman spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said Nato pounded the Libyan capital with more than 60 bombs on Wednesday, killing 31 people and causing dozens of injuries.
The explosions came after up to 3,000 Qadhafi troops attacked Libya’s third-largest city Misrata in a three-pronged movement from the south, west and east, rebel spokesman Hassan al-Galai told AFP by telephone from the city.
Misrata is the most significant enclave in western Libya captured by the rebels since the start of the uprising in mid-February as they battle to oust Qadhafi, who has ruled the north African nation for some four decades.
International powers were gathering for talks in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to discuss the crisis in Libya, with the nation’s veteran leader having vowed never to surrender despite the Nato-led military campaign.
“With each meeting, international pressure is growing and momentum is building for change in Libya,” said Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the US delegation arrived in Abu Dhabi for the third International Contact Group talks.
Two dozen countries, including key Nato allies Britain, France and Italy, as well as delegates from the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organisation of Islamic Conference are due to attend the talks.
As the military, political and economic pressure mounts on Qadhafi to step down, the group will discuss “what a post-Qadhafi Libya ought to look like,” a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Another US administration official said the Contact Group would discuss the dire need for funding for the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC).
The opposition has complained that little has happened since the group last met on May 5 in Rome when Clinton and her partners agreed on a new fund to aid the rebels and promised to tap frozen assets of Qadhafi’s regime.
Nato allies Wednesday pledged to stay in Libya “for as long as necessary” and commit the “necessary means” to the military campaign as they extended the operation for another 90 days until late September.
“All ministers agreed we will keep up the pressure for as long as it takes to bring this to an early conclusion,” Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting in Brussels.
But the top US uniformed commander Admiral Michael Mullen conceded the Libya campaign was making “very slow progress,” while French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet played down expectations of a quick end to the war.
With only eight out of 28 Nato members carrying out air strikes, Nato’s secretary general as well as the US and British defence chiefs prodded allies to help ease the burden on air crews showing signs of fatigue.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates named three countries that should mull taking part in air strikes – Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands – and urged Germany and Poland, which are not participating at all, to consider joining the campaign, said officials familiar with the discussions.
“We want to see increased urgency in some quarters in terms of Libya,” British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said before the talks.
The Nato defence ministers also renewed their demand for the Libyan strongman to leave power.
“Time is working against Qadhafi, who has clearly lost all legitimacy and therefore needs to step down,” their joint statement said.
Meanwhile, in a new twist the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said investigators had evidence Qadhafi ordered mass rapes and bought containers of sex drugs for troops to attack women.
“Now we are getting some information that Qadhafi himself decided to rape and this is new,” Moreno-Ocampo said at the United Nations.
He said there were reports of hundreds of women attacked in some areas of Libya and evidence the authorities had bought “erectile dysfunction”-fighting medicines, and given them to troops as part of the official rape policy.
A defiant Qadhafi said in a message broadcast on state television on his 69th birthday on Tuesday that he was prepared to fight to the death.
“Despite the bombings, we will never submit,” Kadhafi said. “We have only one choice — (to stay in) our country to the end. Death, life, victory, no matter what.”
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