Libya Campaign Enters New Month, With Little Change

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Source: McClatchy

BENGHAZI, Libya — The NATO-led bombing campaign that Western leaders hope will topple Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi marked its first month Tuesday, still seemingly no closer to its goal.

NATO announced that on Monday it had made 53 bombing runs on Gadhafi targets, striking, among other things, eight ammunition bunkers and a headquarters building near Tripoli, four tanks near Misrata, and an unidentified building near the key oil terminal town of Brega.

But conditions in the country remained largely unchanged. Amnesty International issued an urgent plea for the international community to take more aggressive action to provide humanitarian aide to Misrata. Supplies of food and medicine were dwindling, the group said, and thousands of foreign workers remain trapped at the city's port "desperate to leave." Fighting is making evacuation of the wounded impossible, the group said.

"Where is the international community and why is it not doing anything to provide the protection that it promised, and which they crave, to the vulnerable and increasingly desperate inhabitants of Misrata?" Amnesty's representative in Misrata, Donatella Rovera, wrote in a blog post.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/19/112467/libya-campaign-enters-new-month.html#ixzz1K2FKNxQg