Rebel fighters celebrate after coming back from the front line against Moammar Gadhafi's forces, in Ajdabiya, Libya, Monday, May 9, 2011. UPI\Tarek Alhuony. |
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TRIPOLI, Libya, June 23 (UPI) -- Libyan women lashed out at NATO after leader Moammar Gadhafi branded the alliance "murderers" for an airstrike that killed an aide's granddaughters.
The estimated 300 mostly women, some armed, gathered Thursday in Tripoli's Green Square -- site of pro- and anti-Gadhafi demonstrations since February -- vowing to defend their country against the intergovernmental military alliance and the pro-democracy rebels the alliance is supporting under a United Nations resolution to protect civilians. The alliance effort is supported by a number of Arab allies.
The women's verbal attacks followed a defiant recording from Gadhafi aired on state-run al-Jamahiriya TV Wednesday night calling NATO airstrikes "a second crusader war that might extend to Africa, Europe and America."
He said that even if the attacks continue for 10 years, the NATO allies will lose.
"One day we will respond to you likewise, and your houses, sons and children may become legitimate targets for us," Gadhafi said after calling NATO forces "murders," "criminals" and "savages" for striking a palatial country estate and wild-game farm belonging to Khoweildi al-Hamidi, a former military officer and close Gadhafi associate who participated in his 1969 coup.
Hamidi's daughter is married to one of Gadhafi's sons.
Hamidi was unharmed, Libyan officials said, but the 19 reported dead included three of his young granddaughters.
"You said, 'We hit our targets with precision' -- "You murderers!" the BBC quoted Gadhafi as saying, using words intended to mock a NATO statement after the airstrike.
NATO called the bombing "a precision strike on a legitimate military target -- a command-and-control node which was directly involved in coordinating systematic attacks on the Libyan people."
That bombing, near the coastal city of Surman, about 40 miles west of Tripoli, came a day after NATO conceded another airstrike may have hit a civilian Tripoli neighborhood, killing as many as nine people.
Gadhafi called on the U.N. Security Council -- minus council members Britain, France and the United States, which he called "the three criminals" -- to investigate the civilian airstrike deaths.
