TRIPOLI, May 10 (Reuters) – A number of blasts were heard from apparent NATO missile strikes targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s compound and other sites in Tripoli on Tuesday, witnesses said.

Libyan officials said four children were wounded, two of them seriously, by flying glass caused by blasts from NATO strikes in the Tripoli area overnight.

Officials showed foreign journalists a hospital in the Libyan capital where some windows had been shattered, saying the damage was the result of a NATO strike that toppled a nearby telecommunications tower.

The journalists were also taken to a government building housing the high commission for children that had been completely destroyed. The old colonial building had been damaged before in what officials said was a NATO strike on April 30.

No other information was immediately available, but the Tripoli blasts occurred against a backdrop of a stalemate in the rebel war to unseat Gaddafi and the resulting dilemma for Western powers over whether to offer covert aid to the rebels.

By Guy Desmond | Tue May 10, 2011 3:39am GMT

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