British warplanes bombed a bunker in Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirte as rebel fighters prepared yesterday to launch an offensive on the town, one of the last major regime holdouts east of Tripoli.
Meanwhile, the UN said it will investigate reports of summary killings and torture through its existing commission of inquiry on Libya.
Also, the UN human rights chief warned against bounty hunters who may be seeking to kill Gaddafi, saying that all assassinations are "not within the rule of law."
"The rule of law is essential. That applies to Gaddafi as well as everybody else," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a response to a question on the $1.67 million reward put on Gaddafi head, dead or alive.
While Britain's defence minister said Nato was providing intelligence assets to help the rebels find Gaddafi, the US State Department said neither Nato nor Washington was involved in the manhunt, Reuters reports.
"At around midnight, a formation of Tornado GR4s... fired a salvo of Storm Shadow precision-guided missiles against a large headquarters bunker in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte," the defence ministry said in London.
The bunker housed a command and control centre. There is no indication that Col Gaddafi was in Sirte, which is 250 miles east of Tripoli, or in the bunker itself at the time of the attack.
Speculation that Gaddafi might have found refuge in the town has not been confirmed.
"It's not a question of finding Gaddafi, it's ensuring the regime does not have the capability to continue waging war against its own people," UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC.
"The attack that we launched on the bunker in Sirte last night was to make sure that there was no alternative command and control should the regime try to leave Tripoli."
Nato warplanes also targeted 29 vehicles mounted with weapons near Sirte and bombed surface-to-air missile facilities near Tripoli, the alliance said at a daily briefing in Brussels.
A Nato official in Brussels told AFP on condition of anonymity that the vehicles were part of a convoy advancing toward the rebel-held port of Misrata, about 140 kilometres away.
Meanwhile, the rebels are building up their forces around the oil port town of Ras Lanuf, preparing for an assault on Sirte.
They had to withdraw from positions nearer Sirte to put themselves out of the range of Grad rockets being fired by Gaddafi loyalists.
The BBC's Paul Wood, who is with the rebels, says their mood is still buoyant, despite running into unexpectedly stiff resistance.
Rebel commanders think the fighting on the road to Sirte could last another three or four days, our correspondent says.
Regime forces in Sirte have been regularly targeted since the start of the campaign, the Nato official said, but it is in sharp focus now because "it's one of the last places he (Gaddafi) has control of."
"It has always been a stronghold of the regime and now the remnants of the regime are using it to launch attacks," the official said.
"Misrata is one of those cities we have to protect. ... This regime, no matter what state it's in, is still capable of killing civilians."
Diehards of Gaddafi, whose son Seif al-Islam vowed from the start that loyalists would fight "to the last bullet", are still trying to reconstitute Nato-decimated weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, the official said.
"This large convoy is a very threatening move, as threatening as launching a missile."
"This is an extremely desperate and dangerous remnant of a former regime and they are obviously desperately trying to disrupt the fact that the Libyan people have started to take responsibility for their own country."
Rumours of Gaddafi or his sons being cornered or sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machinegun and rocket exchanges. But even after his compound was overrun on Tuesday, hopes of a swift end to the war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.
The rebels' Colonel Hisham Buhagiar said they were targeting several areas to find Gaddafi: "We are sending special forces every day to hunt down Gaddafi. We have one unit that does intelligence and other units that hunt him down."
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"We urge all those in positions of authority in Libya, including field commanders, to take active steps to ensure that no crimes, or acts of revenge, are committed," UN spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters.
The UN has previously said some military action in Libya could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes visited a hospital in the Mitiga district of Tripoli which had received the bodies of 17 rebel fighters.
Doctors said the group had been prisoners of Gaddafi troops in Tripoli and were tortured and killed as the rebels seized the capital earlier this week.
Hoez Zaitan, a British medic working at the hospital, said about half the bodies had bullet wounds to the back of the head while others had disfiguring injuries to their limbs and hands.
He said the bodies had been examined for possible evidence to be used at a war crimes tribunal.
Source : The Daily Star
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