Downed, but safe

Elisabeth Bumiller and Kareem Fahim have an article in The New York Times about the situation in Libya:

Allied fighters struck targets in Tripoli on a fourth day of airstrikes, but forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi showed no signs of ending their sieges of rebel held cities, as the Security Council has demanded, while President Obama spoke with the French and British leaders in an effort to defuse a disagreement among the allies over how to manage the military action against Libya.
Attacks by pro-Qaddafi forces were particularly intense in the western cities of Misurata, where snipers and artillery killed forty people and wounded 189, a rebel spokesman said, and Zintan. Both cities have been under siege for weeks.
Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, an American officer who is the tactical commander of the mission, said that his intelligence reports confirmed that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were attacking civilians in Misurata on Tuesday. The admiral, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon by telephone, did not say whether there had been a response yet, but said, “We are considering all options.”
An American fighter jet crashed overnight in the first known setback for the international coalition. According to the United States military, an F-15E Strike Eagle warplane went down late Monday “when the aircraft experienced equipment malfunction.”
The aircraft, normally based in England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base in northeastern Italy when it crashed. “Both crew members ejected and are safe,” an American statement said.
A photograph showed its charred wreckage surrounded by onlookers in the middle of what looked like an empty field. The American military said that the plane’s crew, the pilot and a weapons officer, landed by parachute in two different areas of eastern Libya and that the pilot had been found by a coalition rescue team and the weapons officer by Libyans. Admiral Locklear said that the weapons officer “was treated with dignity and respect” by the Libyans and is now in the custody of the United States.
Admiral Locklear did not say whether Libyan civilians or rebels found the weapons officer, and provided few other details. But a Marine Corps officer said that two Harrier attack jets dropped two 500-pound bombs during the rescue of the pilot, about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday local time (about 7:30 p.m. Monday). The officer said that the grounded pilot, who was in contact with rescue crews in the air, asked for the bombs to be dropped as a precaution before the crews landed to pick him up. “My understanding is he asked for the ordnance to be delivered between where he was located and where he saw people coming towards him,” the officer said, adding that the pilot evidently made the request “to keep what he thought was a force closing in on him from closing in on him.” The officer said he did not know if the people approaching the pilot were friendly or hostile or whether any Libyans had been killed or injured in the explosions from the bombs.
Channel 4 News in Britain reported that six villagers were shot by American troops during one of the rescue operations, but it was unclear whether it was the rescue of the pilot or the weapons officer. None of the villagers, who were interviewed by a Channel 4 reporter in a nearby hospital, were killed, though a small boy could have a leg amputated. The United States military said it was investigating the reports. The Marine Corps officer had no information on whether there had been shots fired by the United States during either of the rescue operations.American officials said on Monday that military strikes to destroy air defenses and establish a no-fly zone over Libya had nearly accomplished their initial objectives, and that the United States was moving swiftly to hand command to allies in Europe. Admiral Locklear indicated there would be more strikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s ground forces in coming days now that 161 Tomahawk cruise missiles have largely knocked out his air defenses, largely freeing coalition pilots from the possibility of being shot down.
The admiral said he expected planes from Qatar— the only Arab country to provide aircraft so far— to be flying for the coalition by the weekend. But divisions persisted on Tuesday over how the campaign should continue and under whose command, though the NATO countries seemed to be making progress on an arrangement that would retain a substantial role for NATO while addressing French concerns about putting the military alliance fully in charge.
With the United States intent on stepping back from the primary role in attacking Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces and enforcing a no-fly zone, Mr. Obama called Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France from Air Force One as he flew from Chile to El Salvador. “What we’re saying right now is that NATO has a key role to play here,” Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters aboard Air Force One.
France has proposed a committee of foreign ministers of countries involved in the operation to act as a "political steering body,” French foreign minister Alain Juppé told parliament on Tuesday. He said NATO would then provide “support”; the military “command and control” necessary to coordinate the airplanes and missions of various countries.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday that the United Nations should be the umbrella for a solely humanitarian operation in Libya, Reuters reported, insisting that his country, a NATO ally, “will never ever be a side pointing weapons at the Libyan people”. The dispute raised concerns that American plans to hand over command of the operation could be delayed by disputes among its partners over who should take control.
The White House released a statement saying that President Obama had also called Mr. Erdogan and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to impress upon them the need for “a broad-based international effort, including Arab states,” in the military campaign in Libya.
Outside the Western alliance, divisions seemed to deepen, with China joining Brazil and Russia in calling for a cease-fire, while India said there should be no foreign presence in Libya. India, Brazil, Russia, China, and Germany abstained from the United Nations vote last week that authorized the intervention.
American, British and French warplanes have been flying sorties since Saturday, stalling a ground attack by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east and hitting targets including air defenses, an airfield and part of Colonel Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli. But the firepower of more than 130 Tomahawk cruise missiles and attacks by allied warplanes have not yet succeeded in accomplishing the more ambitious demands by the United States, repeated by President Obama in a letter to Congress, that Colonel Qaddafi withdraw his forces from embattled cities and cease all attacks against civilians.
Ahmed Khalifa, a rebel spokesman in Benghazi, said that there was still heavy fighting in the western rebel-held cities of Misurata and Zintan. “Snipers are everywhere in Misrata, shooting anyone who walks by while the world is still watching,” a doctor in Misurata told The Associated Press. “The situation is going from bad to worse. We can do nothing but wait. Sometimes we depend on one meal per day.”
Government shelling of Zintan had demolished a mosque, Mr. Khalifa said, adding that Colonel Qaddafi’s talk of a cease-fire was “meaningless”. He said that the allied airstrikes “did in fact prevent further death and destruction. The front lines are still very fluid,” he said, saying there was no movement in the standoff between rebel fighters and Qaddafi forces in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. The rebel fighters are no match for the firepower of the pro-Qaddafi forces dug in around the city, which rests firmly in their control. But a correspondent for the Guardian, a British daily, said he had heard loud explosions around the city and had to “assume coalition aircraft are attacking Qaddafi forces around Ajdabiya.”
State television in Libya said that there had been more attacks by what it called the “crusader enemy,” Reuters reported, but the broadcaster struck a defiant tone, saying, “These attacks are not going to scare the Libyan people.”
But the airstrikes seemed to have emboldened the citizens of Tripoli, the capital city that is considered a pro-Qaddafi stronghold. On an officially supervised visit to the Old City on Tuesday, foreign reporters who work under close government scrutiny said people seemed noticeably readier to voice criticism.
General Carter F. Ham, the head of the United States Africa Command, who is in charge of the coalition effort, said that he had “full authority” to attack the regime’s forces if they refused to comply with President Obama’s demands that they pull back from Ajdabiya, Misurata, and Zawiya.
United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. “We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed,” Mr. Sayeh told reporters. On Monday night, a United States military official responded that “we know of no instances where this has occurred.”