Escalation In Libya

NATO tightens the ratchet:

In a sudden, sharp escalation of NATO’s air campaign over Libya, warplanes dropped more than 60 bombs on targets in Tripoli on Tuesday, obliterating large areas of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound.

In response, Colonel Qaddafi posted an audio recording on Libyan state television vowing never to surrender or accept defeat. “We welcome death,” he said. “Martyrdom is a million times better.”

...With the repeated bombing of his Tripoli compound, Colonel Qaddafi has become a fugitive in his own capital, unable or unwilling to appear on television and forced, so NATO and people in the rebel underground in Tripoli have said, to stay constantly on the move in the hope of cloaking his whereabouts from NATO.

His isolation has been compounded by signs that support for him has ebbed in wide areas of Tripoli, and growing numbers of high-level defections, from the top ranks of the government and the army.

...A senior NATO diplomat said on Tuesday that the daytime barrage in Tripoli was consistent with the steady escalation of attacks in and around the Libyan capital by allied warplanes and, more recently, armed helicopters.

“It’s a continuing sign that the pressure is increasing all the time,” said the diplomat. “There’s a psychological aspect to the campaign, and we’re sending a clear message: There is only one way out, and that is to go.”