The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry launches a Tomahawk missile at Libya from the Mediterranean Sea. (AP)
Now it’s Moammar Khadafy’s turn to learn firsthand the meaning of the words “shock and awe.”
In an action dubbed Operation Odyssey Dawn, the United States, France and Britain launched the first fierce strikes today in a massive international military action aimed at quashing the Libyan dictator’s attacks on opponents to his repressive regime.
As part of the astounding opening salvo, US and British forces unleashed a ferocious cruise missile attack on the area around Tripoli, Libya’s capital, and the western city of Misrata, the Pentagon said.
Libyan TV quoted the armed forces command as saying 48 were killed and 150 were wounded in allied attacks.
This afternoon, “over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from both US and British ships and submarines struck more than 20 integrated air defense systems and other air defense facilities ashore,” said Vice Adm. William Gortney.
The first missile hit about 3 p.m., he said.
“We are on the leading edge of a coalition military operation,” Gortney said. “This is just the first phase of what will like be a multiphase operation.”
He gave no immediate assessment of the damage the strikes inflicted.
The show of force from the international coalition followed defiant attacks earlier yesterday by Khadafy loyalists on the rebel-held city of Benghazi, on the eastern side of the country — an assault that only strengthened world leaders’ resolve to take on the dictator bent on crushing the opposition movement that has threatened his four decades of rule.
President Obama said military action was not his first choice.
“This is not an outcome the US or any of our partners sought,” Obama said from Brazil, where he was starting a five-day visit to Latin America. “We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy.”
Obama insisted the United States would not send ground forces to Libya — though he said he was “deeply aware” of the risks of taking any military action.
Earlier, he had insisted the coalition was united.
“Our consensus was strong, and our resolve is clear. The people of Libya must be protected,” he said.
France, Britain and the United States had all warned Khadafy on Friday that they would resort to military means if he ignored a UN resolution demanding a cease-fire.
Reports of damage began to emerge. Residents in Misrata told Reuters that strikes targeted a military airbase where Khadafy’s loyalists are based — denying TV reports that fuel depots were hit.
The attacks were supported by a fleet of 25 coalition ships — including the destroyer USS Barry — massed in the Mediterranean, some near the Libyan coast. The force included three US submarines armed with Tomahawk missiles.
A senior military official told The Associated Press that the assault begun yesterday would target air-defense installations around Tripoli and a coastal area south of Benghazi.
Among the day’s other fast-moving developments:
* Hours before the Tomahawk attack, the French led off the assault when five warplanes swooped over Libya, firing at several military vehicles belong to Khadafy’s regime near Benghazi.
Italian aircraft joined in later with surveillance sorties. Five US surveillance planes also were in the area, officials said.
* A rebel plane went down in a spectacular crash in the southern part of Benghazi. Khaled el-Sayeh, the opposition military spokesman, said the plane was an old MiG-23 that belonged to the rebels and that it had been hit by Khadafy’s forces.
The plane burst into flames and nose-dived into the ground. Pictures showed the pilot ejecting, but he was not believed to have survived.
* A summit of world leaders seeking to put in force the UN resolution calling for a no-fly zone galvanized in Paris as Khadafy appeared to violate his own call for a cease-fire.
“Colonel Khadafy has made this happen,” British Prime Minister David Cameron declared. “He has lied to the international community. He has promised a cease-fire; he has broken that cease-fire.
“He continues to brutalize his own people. This has to stop — we have to make it stop.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton underscored the “broad international effort” and said the “world will not sit idly by while more innocent civilians are killed.”
* Khadafy loyalists in Tripoli met the attacks with defiance, pouring into the dictator’s heavily fortified complex in Tripoli last night, claiming they were prepared to sacrifice themselves for him as human shields against airstrikes.
“We want to die for our president,” Wali Madjdali, 35, a computer engineer, told the Times. “We will stay here all night. Even three or four nights if we have to.”
Dozens more Khadafy supporters stood on an airport runway in the south of the country, forming a human chain in an attempt to deter bombing.
* Khadafy tried a whiny, last-ditch round of written appeals to Western leaders — including a creepy kiss-up to Obama, whom he called “our son.”
“I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me,” he wrote.
Late yesterday, Khadafy was planning a speech to his nation about the “crusader enemy,” state television advised.
* Many Arabs welcomed the military action, even the support was tinged with concern about the foreign intervention in the Arab world. “The operation is a strong message to rulers that the dictator era is over,” said Ali Abdul Rahman in San‘a, Yemen, where protesters have called for the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule of their impoverished country.
With Post Wire Services