Reply #100: More Gaddafi forces hiding in civilian areas: NATO

[pinboy3niner]

Tue Jul 26, 2011 6:55pm GMT

By Alysha Love


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO accused Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday of hiding army installations in civilian areas making those locations valid military targets and misleading international journalists by showing them bogus strike areas.


The military alliance said Gaddafi is aiming to discredit Western military efforts to protect civilians during the fighting, conducted under a United Nations mandate.


"Pro-Gaddafi forces are increasingly occupying facilities which once held a civilian purpose," Canadian Colonel Roland Lavoie, a NATO military spokesman, told a news briefing in Brussels.

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"By occupying ... these facilities, the regime has transformed them into military installations, from which it commands ... attacks, causing them to lose their formerly protected status and rendering them valid and necessary military objectives for NATO," Lavoie said.

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http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE76P0H020110726