The North Atlantic Treaty Organization again stepped up pressure on Moammar Gadhafi's embattled government with a series of airstrikes on central Tripoli early Tuesday, a day after some of the regime's efforts to discredit the alliance bombing campaign appeared to be falling short and Col. Gadhafi's forces engaged in heavy fighting with rebels on the outskirts of the war-torn city of Misrata.
NATO warplanes targeted sites around 1000 GMT in Tripoli, appearing to strike near the center of the city. The increasing frequency of daytime attacks aims to squeeze a regime already shaken by a four-month rebellion, sanctions and a series of high-level defections. A NATO statement said the early strikes hit missile storage areas, command and control facilities and a radar system.
In Brussels Monday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance's operations had made significant progress, reiterating that Col. Gadhafi's departure was inevitable and echoing warnings that the rebel administration in Benghazi needed to plan for a post-Gadhafi Libya in order to avoid the mistakes of Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
"It is not a question if but when he'll have to leave power," Mr. Rasmussen told reporters, citing Col. Gadhafi's degraded security forces, high-level defections and advances by rebels seeking to topple him. Asked about stability in Libya if Col. Gadhafi were toppled, Mr. Rasmussen conceded; "naturally, there is a risk."
Libya's regime has repeatedly sought to show that NATO strikes are harming civilians in order to galvanize domestic and international support. But that strategy appeared to backfire somewhat late Sunday, when a hospital worker alleged in a note that a seven-month-old baby that government minders had claimed was wounded by an airstrike had actually been injured in a car crash.
The note, written in English and handed to a foreign reporter at Tripoli Central Hospital, appeared to suggest the government is seeking to exaggerate the number of civilian casualties from NATO strikes on targets critical to the Gadhafi regime. The foreign reporter showed the note to other journalists.
Libya's government says more than 700 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded in NATO airstrikes. But officials haven't shown foreign reporters in Tripoli evidence of large numbers of civilian casualties.
Deputy Prime Minister Khaled Kaim told reporters in Tripoli on Monday that it wasn't government policy to "fabricate the news" and insisted that if a mistake was made, it wasn't by government sources.
"It is from people who are enthusiastic and they want to show journalists that there is injustice and targeting of civilians," he said at a press briefing at a bombed-out building complex.
NATO has buttressed intensified aerial attacks with the deployment of British and French attack helicopters, in an effort to strike Col. Gadhafi's forces with greater precision. But the overall picture remains a stalemate, though rebel groups are hoping NATO's helicopter deployment will make a decisive impact.
On the outskirts of Misrata on Monday, there was evidence of the challenges that the rebels and NATO still face.
At dawn, forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi launched twin offensives against the rebels, pounding their positions in nearby Dafniya with rockets and mortar rounds. The fighting claimed the lives of at least five rebels and wounded 25, according to Khalid Abu-Falgha, a doctor with the opposition. Casualty numbers among pro-regime forces couldn't be obtained.
One rebel fighter, Salah Bash-Agha, a graduate law student, conceded that the inexperienced, ill-equipped rebel force faces bigger challenges in open combat compared with the street fighting at close quarters that they waged successfully against pro-Gadhafi forces for weeks in Misrata.
While Col. Gadhafi's forces retain strength around the enclave of Misrata, NATO strikes appear to be building pressure on the regime from the west of the country. Rebel fighters say they have driven government forces from four towns in the Nafusa mountain-range region, where government brigades had besieged and shelled opposition-held areas for months. The rebels' reports couldn't be independently verified. Col. Jumaa Ibrahim of the region's rebel military council has said rebel fighters won control of the towns of Yefren, Shakshuk, Qasr Al Haj and Al-Galaa, allowing them to secure a key road that would allow humanitarian and military supplies into the area for the first time in weeks. British warplanes destroyed two tanks and two armored personnel carriers in the vicinity of Yefren on June 2.
Humanitarian groups that withdrew from the region in May after heavy shelling from Col. Gadhafi's forces said they couldn't independently confirm that the rebels had advanced.
Asked about reports of rebel gains in the western mountain area, Mr. Kaim told reporters in Tripoli that government forces could retake rebel territory in the west "within hours," but were holding back in order to avoid civilian casualties.
The small rebel force in the western mountains is unlikely to threaten the government's hold on Tripoli, 43 miles to the northwest, but their advance contributes to the perceived momentum of anti-Gadhafi forces across Libya. Pressured by international sanctions and a NATO bombing campaign in its third month, Col. Gadhafi's military is now fighting rebel forces on three fronts—to the west in the Nafusa mountains, in the enclave around rebel-held Misrata, and against the main opposition forces in Brega and Ajdabiya in Libya's east.
Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com and Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com
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