Tripoli, April 20: Four mortar shells fired from Libya have hit an area in neighboring Tunisia, as the fighting continues between Libyan revolutionaries and forces loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Tunisia’s Defense Ministry said four mortar shells landed in an isolated area near the southern border town of Dehiba on Monday, Reuters reports.
The Western coalition airstrikes on Libya do not target the Libyan army bases, allowing the Gaddafi regime to continue killing civilians.
The Libyan revolutionary forces thus accuse Western troops of siding with the Gaddafi regime.
However, in a show of support for Libya’s revolutionaries, the Western coalition carries out practically ineffective and occasional airstrikes on Gaddafi’s military bases.
Thousands of people fleeing Libya’s Western Mountains have poured into neighboring Tunisia in recent weeks.
A Libyan doctor helping refugees in a camp near Dehiba said witnesses had told him that Gaddafi’s forces had stepped up their bombardment of towns in the Western Mountains.
The doctor also said that dozens of civilians had been killed in the area over the last week.
The Western coalition unleashed a major air campaign against Libyan regime forces on March 19 under a UN mandate to protect the Libyan population.
Dozens of civilians have been killed in Libya since US-led forces launched the aerial attacks on the North African country.
NATO has recently admitted to killing revolutionary forces and civilians in an airstrike in eastern Libya but has refused to apologize for the deadly bombing.
The opposition forces have frequently criticized NATO for its failure to prevent the killing of civilians by Gaddafi troops.
Revolutionaries have threatened to ask the United Nations Security Council to suspend the NATO mission in Libya if the military alliance fails to do “its work properly.”
The war in Libya has so far killed around 10,000 people and injured over 50,000 others, reports say.
The new death toll was announced by Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Tuesday after he held talks in the Italian capital, Rome, with Libyan revolutionary leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil.
——–Agencies