“The number of artillery shells and mortars is truly amazing,’’ said Abdul-Athim Salim, a geography professor at the local university. “The only break is when they are changing ammunition. Other than that, it’s continuous. It just keeps going. Boom, boom, boom!’’
Khadafy’s forces have intensified their assault on Libya’s third-largest city, firing tank shells and rockets into residential areas, according to witnesses and human rights groups. NATO commanders have admitted their airpower is limited in being able to protect civilians in a city — the core mission of the international air campaign.
France vowed yesterday to step up airstrikes, and France and Italy said that they would join Britain in sending some liaison officers to support the rebel army in Libya. The deployment of the officers was a sign that there would be no quick and easy end to the war in Libya, military analysts said.
The dispatching of the liaison officers — probably fewer than 40 of them, and carefully not designated as military trainers — is also a sign, they said, that only a combination of military pressure from the sky, economic pressure on the government, and a better-organized and coordinated rebel force will finally convince Khadafy that he has no option but to quit.
In Misurata, the government troops are deployed along Tripoli Street, a downtown thoroughfare, while well-organized groups of rebels man checkpoints every few hundred yards in opposition-controlled areas, flash the “V’’ sign, and shout, “Victorious! Victorious!’’
Most of the Khadafy troops are centered to the south and west of the city of 300,000, and many of the residents who had lived in those areas fled to the northern part of the city by the sea.
There were about four areas of intense fighting in the city yesterday, and everyone seemed to know where the battle lines are.
