April 21 (Bloomberg) -- NATO and its allies are being drawn more deeply into an intervention they had expected would quickly topple Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, as the deaths of two reporters and fighting in the west underscored the conflict’s violence.
The U.S. announced yesterday it will provide $25 million in aid to Libya’s disorganized and poorly equipped rebels, while Italy, France and the U.K. dispatched military advisers. The rebels, who have also received light weapons from Qatar, have failed to capitalize on an alliance-led air campaign that French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged yesterday to intensify.
“We need to step up the pressure on every front,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC radio today. North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led forces yesterday hit two heavy equipment transporters, three armored vehicles and an ammunition storage site near Tripoli, two tanks, a communication tower and a radar station near Misrata and a tank and two rocket launchers near Zintan, the alliance said in an e-mailed statement.
The uprising aimed at ending Qaddafi’s 42-year rule, which began in mid-February, has ground to a military stalemate near the central oil-port city of Brega. Residents of the rebel-held western city of Misrata, besieged for more than six weeks, suffer daily shelling by Qaddafi’s forces that a United Nations official said yesterday may constitute war crimes.
Western Libyan Fighting
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