UN staff evacuates Tripoli

Angry mob attacks foreign embassies and UN offices

UN staffers have fled Tripoli after angry mobs attacked offices and embassies in apparent retaliation for a NATO air strike on Col. Muammar Gadhafi’s compound that killed one of his sons and three of his grandchildren on Sunday, Al Jazeera reports. A spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 12 workers have left Libya and are now in Tunisia. The offices in Tripoli were vandalized after an angry mob overpowered police, but nobody was reported injured. Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Kaled Kaim, called the air strike on the Gadhafi compound an assassination attempt on the Libyan leader, while the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused NATO of a “disproportionate use of force,” and have questioned whether the coalition has overstepped its mandate by deliberately targeting Gadhafi and his relatives. Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the Canadian commander of NATO’s Libya operation, said, “we do not target individuals.”

Al Jazeera English

tags:Libya