Misrata struck by rockets in fresh fighting after US drone fires missile

The US carried out its first missile attack from a drone aircraft in Libya as fighting continued in the rebel-held city of Misrata.

The Predator drone fired its missile yesterday, the US Defense Department said in an e-mailed statement, without elaborating. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said a Predator strike destroyed a multiple-rocket launcher that had been used against civilians in Misrata.

Rebels in Libya have been fighting to end Muammar Qaddafi’s 42-year rule since mid-February. NATO war planes operating over the capital Tripoli struck near Qaddafi’s Bab al-Azizia compound, AP reported yesterday. Bursts of automatic weapons fire and rocket explosions could be heard in the city of Misrata, the BBC reported today, citing its correspondents.

Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed yesterday to accept a plan that allows him to cede power in exchange for immunity, a government official said. He would be the third leader forced from office since popular unrest spread through the West Asia, ousting the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he doesn’t anticipate a partition of Libya to create an area for current Qaddafi’s supporters and another for those opposed to him. “I don’t think a partition” is likely “because this is not an east-west split,” Hague told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in London today.

Looking Viable
Fighting has lasted more than six weeks in Misrata where 25 people died and 100 were hurt yesterday in shelling by troops loyal toQaddafi, unidentified medical personnel told Al Jazeera television.

Libyan tribal leaders are trying to get rebels in Misrata to lay down their arms within 48 hours, AP reported, citing Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim. If negotiations fail, tribal chiefs may send armed supporters into the city of 300,000 to fight the rebels, AP reported Kaim as saying.

Rebel control of Misrata would leave Qaddafi in charge of one major city, Tripoli, W Andrew Terrill, a research professor of national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, said in an interview.

‘Viable Force’
“If the rebels have Benghazi and Misrata, they’re looking like a viable force and a legitimate government” and it could make a stronger case for other nations to join France, Italy and Qatar in recognizing them, Terrill said.

NATO is leading what it calls a United Nations-sanctioned mission to police a no-fly zone, protect civilians and enforce an arms embargo against Qaddafi’s regime.