NATO Strikes Qaddafi Compound

The attack on the compound was the third since air raids began in mid-March, but the strike at the television complex was the most significant broadening yet of the NATO air campaign, suggesting that nonmilitary targets would be hit in an effort to break down the instruments of Colonel Qaddafi’s broader control.

A senior Libyan government official said that the strike knocked state television off the air for about a half hour.

In the port of Misurata, 130 miles east of Tripoli, the capital, rebels reported that a widely publicized government pullback had given way to renewed shelling by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces from outside the city. The initial withdrawal over the weekend after a nearly two-month siege had bewildered some rebels.

Also on Monday, Italy, after weeks of declining to participate in direct bombing raids, said for the first time that it would begin striking select military targets in Libya.

In Tripoli, at least two large bomb blasts thundered in the city just after midnight, and journalists escorted to the compound by government officials saw firefighters hosing down the smoldering remains of an office complex where Colonel Qaddafi works and meets visitors. The explosions sent cement and debris flying more than 50 yards. There were no signs of armaments, and Libyan officials said that no one was killed, although they said that as many as 45 people were slightly injured.

A government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said later that three people had been killed and 45 were injured, 15 of them seriously, by the airstrikes. He did not elaborate and turned down a request to arrange for interviews with the wounded.

Mr. Ibrahim declined comment on whether Colonel Qaddafi was in the compound at the time of the attack, but he said the Libyan government considered the attack “an attempt to assassinate the leader and unifying figure of this country.”

“He is well,” Mr. Ibrahim said of Colonel Qaddafi. “He is healthy. He is in high spirits.” Colonel Qaddafi, who has made infrequent appearances in Tripoli since the uprising began, was conducting business as usual on Monday, meeting with government officials and tribal elders, Mr. Ibrahim told reporters at the scene.

Appearing on state television, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, one of the Libyan leader’s sons, asserted that the attack would not shake the Libyan people. It would scare only children, he said, according to the official news agency. At the compound, a small crowd of young Qaddafi supporters gathered a few hundred yards from the site of the attack. The so-called voluntary human shields chanted and rallied before state television cameras and the visiting journalists. But elsewhere government officials appeared more anxious than usual about the stepped-up pace of the bombing attacks, accusing the NATO allies of seeking to terrorize the Libyan people.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity moments after the attack, said in exasperation that the strikes had gone too far and would justify terrorist counterattacks by Libyan forces in the cities of NATO countries. Other officials were already worrying aloud about the safety of their families in places like Surt, a center of support for Colonel Qaddafi that has also come under attack by NATO planes.

Of the two previous attacks at or near Colonel Qaddafi’s compound, the first came soon after the airstrikes began in mid-March, with an air raid mangling a building described by NATO officials as a command and control center. The second took place a few nights ago, when two NATO missiles slammed into some kind of underground concrete bunker just outside the compound’s walls.

In Misurata, pro-Qaddafi officials said in recent days that their forces had pulled back to permit a group of neighboring tribes to broker a cease-fire with the rebels in the city or to continue the fight.

But rebels, speaking over Internet connections on Monday, said that neither a military pullback nor a tribal intervention had materialized.

Mohamed, a rebel spokesman whose full name was withheld to protect his family, said that his 92-year-old father and a cousin were killed, along with 32 others, in shelling Saturday night and that 8 more people had been killed on Sunday night.

“It has been a bloody two days,” he said. “There was no pullback.”

“There was defeat and then revenge,” he added, referring to the rebels’ recent success at driving some pro-Qaddafi gunmen out of certain buildings they had?controlled inside Misurata.

“We think the ‘pullback’ was actually a signal to escalate,” Mohamed said.

Italy announced its decision to participate in the air raids after a telephone conversation between President Obama and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy did not specify what kinds of targets its planes would now hit but said its decision would place it “in line with allied operations.” In recent weeks, Italy irked the United States and other NATO allies by declining to participate in raids over Libya, a former colony with which it has close economic ties. In the statement, Italy said it would continue to provide NATO forces full use of its bases for logistical support.

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting from Rome.