ZLITAN, Libya (Reuters) — Libyan officials said Tuesday that dozens of civilians had been killed in a NATO strike on a cluster of farmhouses east of the capital, Tripoli, but the alliance said it had hit a legitimate military target.
A spokesman for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government who took foreign reporters to the site said 85 people had been killed when missiles struck farm compounds in the village of Majar, about 90 miles east of Tripoli. He said 33 children, 32 women and 20 men had been killed.
Standing on a pile of rubble, the spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said: “This is a crime beyond imagination. Everything about this place is civilian.”
There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but there were no bodies there, either. Nor was there blood.
At a news conference in Brussels, a NATO military spokesman said the target of the strikes was a military staging area that was being used to support government attacks on civilians. “This was a legitimate target,” said the spokesman, Col. Roland Lavoie.
Source: nytimes.com