TRIPOLI: Western powers launched a second wave of air strikes on Libya early on Monday after halting the advance of Muammar Qaddafi’s forces on Benghazi and targeting air defences to let their planes patrol the skies.

The UN-mandated intervention to protect civilians caught up in a one-month-old revolt against Qaddafi drew criticism from Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who questioned the need for a heavy bombardment, which he said had killed many civilians.

But the United States, carrying out the air strikes in a coalition with Britain, France, Italy and Canada among others, said the campaign was working and dismissed a ceasefire announcement by the Libyan military on Sunday evening.

Britain’s Defence Ministry said one of its submarines had again fired Tomahawk guided missiles on Sunday night as part of a second wave of attacks to enforce the UN resolution.

“We and our international partners are continuing operations in support of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973,” a ministry spokesman said.

Italy said it also had warplanes in the air, after US and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the US military’s Joint Staff, told reporters there had been no new Libyan air activity or radar emissions, but a significant decrease in Libyan air surveillance, since strikes began Saturday.

Benghazi was not yet free from threat, said Gortney, but Qaddafi’s forces in the area were in distress and “suffering from isolation and confusion” after the air assaults.

Late on Sunday night, Libyan officials took Western reporters to Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, a sprawling complex that houses his private quarters as well as military barracks, anti-aircraft batteries and other installations, to see what they said was the site of a missile attack two hours earlier.

“It was a barbaric bombing,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, showing pieces of shrapnel that he said came from the missile. “This contradicts American and Western (statements) that it is not their target to attack this place.”

A Libyan military spokesman announced a new ceasefire on Sunday, saying that “the Libyan armed forces have issued a command to all military units to safeguard an immediate ceasefire from 9 pm this evening”.

Both before and after he spoke, heavy anti-aircraft gunfire boomed above central Tripoli.

Outside Benghazi, smouldering, shattered tanks and troop carriers from what had been Qaddafi’s advancing forces littered the main road. The charred bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert.

But with Qaddafi having vowed to fight to the death, there were fears his troops might try to force their way into cities, seeking shelter from air attacks among the civilian population.

In central Benghazi, sporadic explosions and heavy exchanges of gunfire could be heard in the streets late on Sunday evening.

A Reuters witness said the firing lasted about 40 minutes.

In Misrata, the last rebel-held city in western Libya, government tanks moved in after a base used by Gaddafi’s forces outside was hit by air strikes on Saturday, residents said.

“There is fighting between the rebels and Qaddafi’s forces. Their tanks are in the centre of Misrata. There are so many casualties we cannot count them,” Abdelbasset, a spokesman for the rebels in Misrata, told Reuters on Sunday afternoon.

Civilian Casualties

A Libyan government health official said 64 people had been killed by Western bombardment on Saturday and Sunday morning, but it was impossible to independently verify the report.

Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the “colonial enemy”. Ten bodies were wrapped in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group’s 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report on the bombardment, which he said had “led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians”.

“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” Egypt’s state news agency quoted him as saying.

There was no immediate public backing for his call from any government in the region, however.

Arab support for a no-fly zone provided crucial underpinning for the passage of a UN Security Council resolution last week that paved the way for Western action to stop Qaddafi killing civilians as he fights an uprising against his 41-year rule.

US President Barack Obama spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah, while Vice President Joe Biden phoned leaders in Algeria and Kuwait to shore up Arab support.

The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

COLOMBO: A host of international figures, including a US war crimes investigator, landed in Sri Lanka on Tuesday for visits expected to focus on alleged atrocities committed during the country’s civil war. As the separate US, Japanese and United Nations officials arrived in Colombo, the government furiously denied that any war crimes were committed during the final months of fighting last year. The US embassy in Colombo said the two advisors had been sent by President Barack Obama to discuss issues including the military offensive that ended the decades-long war with separatist Tamil rebels in May 2009. Samantha Power, special assistant to the president on multilateral affairs and human rights, and David Pressman, national security council director for war crimes and atrocities, will hold four days of meetings in Sri Lanka. The embassy said the visit followed last month’s meeting in Washington between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G L Peiris. The US has been pressing for an independent war crimes investigation into the final phase of fighting that ended with the Tamil Tigers’ defeat. Sri Lanka this week is also hosting two other international envoys to discuss peace and reconciliation and alleged human rights abuses during the war. UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s top political adviser, Lynn Pascoe, and Japan’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, were due on Tuesday for talks with Sri Lankan officials. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said those making war crimes allegations had failed to prove their claims. “I challenge them to produce evidence,” he told the Sinhalese-language Lankadeepa newspaper. “There is no point in giving photographs and videos to the media. We have an established legal system. Use it.” Sri Lanka has denied any civilians were killed during the final offensive against the rebels last year, although the United Nations reported that at least 7,000 Tamil civilians perished in 2009. Both Pascoe and Akashi are expected to push Sri Lanka to improve ethnic reconciliation a year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas, who were fighting for a Tamil homeland. Ban is due to appoint a panel on Sri Lanka following widespread allegations that both sides in the war were responsible for crimes against humanity. The top Sri Lankan army commander at the time, General Sarath Fonseka, has denied any wrongdoing, but has agreed to testify before any war crimes tribunal. Fonseka fell out with the government and quit in November before unsuccessfully challenging President Mahinda Rajapakse’s re-election at January polls.