Errant NATO Airstrikes in Libya: 13 Cases

March 30Surman

Destruction of Warehouses at a Former Plastic Factory

This factory had been defunct for some time. Its owner, neighbors said, used the factory’s warehouses for an import business and stored goods in them.

One pair of warehouses was struck by two bombs from allied aircraft early in the war, when the campaign was still under American command. Anti-Qaddafi guards now at the site, who live in the neighborhood, said they witnessed the strikes that night. They said they believed that ammunition had been stored on the site briefly, perhaps a month before the air war began, but had been moved, and that neither the factory complex nor its warehouses had a military presence or military equipment within.

The warehouses, now destroyed, held only canned tomatoes, they said. Now, the rubble in the open-air ruins of the place contained what these men said: stacks and bins of canned tomatoes.

No one was wounded in the attack, the guards said. But they were perplexed by the rationale for the strike. It was, by their account, an example of a bombing strike that relied on poor intelligence, dated intelligence or both.

June 20Surman

Destruction of a Post Office

The post office and a building next to it, both alongside a large communications tower, were destroyed. Beside them was a small residential building that was extensively damaged. The damage to the home seemed to have been caused by flying debris, not a direct hit.

Anti-Qaddafi fighters now occupy an undamaged building on the other side of the post office. They said the two destroyed buildings had been used by the Qaddafi military as a communications site. (Both sides in the war used public buildings, including schools, for military purposes.) The tower, two of them said, was connected to a command center at the home of a Qaddafi confidant, a major general, who lived a few blocks away and was also struck.

The anti-Qaddafi fighters said the damaged residential building had been occupied by a family, including a woman and a child. No one was killed in their apartment, but several rooms were destroyed and the family’s possessions ruined, these fighters said. The family moved away. Clothing, food and toys remained in the rooms. This strike appeared to have been a case of NATO striking a potentially legitimate military target but damaging adjacent civilian infrastructure.

June 20Surman

Destruction of a General’s Residential Compound

This gated compound included multiple houses, expansive gardens, bird cages and swimming pools. It was owned by the Hamedi family. Maj. Gen. El-Khweldi el-Hamedi, the patriarch, was a member of Colonel Qaddafi’s Revolutionary Council. In addition to the general’s residence, two of his sons — Mohammed and Khaled — had homes here.

NATO aircraft destroyed at least three homes, along with what appeared to be a service building and a tentlike structure on the compound’s western side. The strikes were direct hits — a deliberate attack that probably included delayed-fuze bombs. (Ordnance in several places seemed to have passed through concrete ceilings and upper rooms and exploded within, perhaps beneath the ground floor.)

Rebel fighters said the general and his sons were commanders directing operations in western Libya. The compound, two local fighters said, was connected by cable to a communications tower at a post office. Local anti-Qaddafi fighters said officers in the Qaddafi military visited the compound for meetings with the general.

The Hamedi family said these claims were fabrications. The general had retired, they said, and Khaled ran a charity. Their homes, they said, were occupied by women, children and the family’s staff members, a claim local anti-Qaddafi fighters confirmed.

By Khaled’s account, the family had celebrated the third birthday of Khweldi, one of his sons, hours before NATO attacked. Guests were sleeping when as many as eight bombs hit, turning homes to rubble, crushing those within.

The Qaddafi government used the strike for propaganda purposes. It claimed as many as 19 civilians were killed and put up portraits of the victims across Tripoli. Khaled offered a slightly different count, saying 13 civilians were killed and six wounded. Among the dead, he said, were his wife, two children and one of his nieces. Local anti-Qaddafi guards, who had no sympathy for the Hamedis, corroborated those deaths and said members of their families had seen the children’s bodies immediately after the attack. The other deaths could not be confirmed, in part because the victims and the family were scattered by the war.

General Hamedi survived and has sought refuge in Morocco. Khaled also survived. He filed a lawsuit against NATO in Brussels. “Hopefully, one day I will get justice,” he said by e-mail.

A wing of one ruined home bore signs of a bomb that did not explode. It passed through a reinforced concrete ceiling and floor, into the earth below. The Times provided photographs and the location to the Mines Advisory Group, a nongovernmental organization that was cleaning up unexploded munitions in Libya.

March 29Mizdah

Attack on an Ammunition Depot

This depot in the desert stored munitions for a military base up the road. Doctors in Mizdah said that many people, presuming the depot would be hit, moved from nearby homes once foreign air forces had entered the war to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Others remained behind, including medical workers.

Airstrikes began in March and hit the bunkers many times. When the first strikes hit, the campaign was under American, not NATO, command. Several attacks set off huge secondary explosions, which caused munitions to fly out. Among them were 107-millimeter rockets, which, by design, can fly without a launcher.

One rocket traveled more than three miles to a residential building beside the local hospital, where it wounded a North Korean doctor and his wife and set fire to their home, destroying their possessions.

The victims were Dr. Yun Chol-jin, 38, who suffered a head wound and a severe injury to his left foot, and his wife, Won Yuu-hui, 30, who suffered an open skull fracture. Both have had many operations and are disabled.

Uncountable tons of damaged munitions now coat the depot. While a team from The New York Times was at the hospital, at least 20 explosions were heard from the depot. At the depot, the team witnessed or heard at least 20 more in less than three hours. The place, unguarded, was busy with scrap collectors. Dr. Miklos Poratunszky, a neurologist, said the staff members were treating several patients each week for wounds suffered there.

Some of the wounded appeared to have fallen victim to cluster munitions called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, which are regarded by many explosives experts as a scourge. These do not appear to have been dropped by Western aircraft but were Qaddafi military stock that was scattered about by allied strikes.

June 19Tripoli

Destruction of a Family Home

NATO ordnance struck the home of an elderly man, Ali Mukhar al-Gharari, at night. Five family members were killed and eight others were wounded, survivors and neighbors said.

The Qaddafi government used the casualties for propaganda and gave an apparently inflated death toll of nine. Mohammed al-Gharari, one of Ali Mukhar’s sons, said Moussa Ibrahim, the top Qaddafi government spokesman, had told the family that it had to make statements critical of NATO. Mohammed said that he had refused and that the number of people killed from his family was five.

The dead included four victims from the courtyard apartment: Karima Ali, who was one of Ali Mukhar’s daughters; her husband, Abdullah; and their children, Jomana, 2, and Khaled, 7 months. Faruj Ali al-Gharari, another of Ali Mukhar’s adult sons, was killed, too, the family said. He had been in bed in a second-floor apartment. His pregnant wife was in another room and survived. A car owned by the family was destroyed; its crushed remains were faintly visible in the rubble.

The New York Times could not confirm the Qaddafi government’s claims that others had been killed.

NATO initially acknowledged the error and came close to admitting having killed civilians. “It appears that one weapon did not strike the intended target; there may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties,” Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the commander of the Libyan mission, said the next day.

NATO later backtracked, saying the alliance had not “confirmed” civilian deaths. Representatives of two rights groups, Civic Worldwide and Human Rights Watch, met with NATO officials and provided information about the deaths. Civic Worldwide summarized NATO’s position as this: Only if NATO confirms deaths itself will the alliance acknowledge deaths, but since NATO has no intention of investigating this episode these deaths are unconfirmed.

In December, Oana Lunguscu, a NATO headquarters spokeswoman, confirmed that a weapon had not hit its target that night and that at the same time there had been an explosion reported here. While NATO had not confirmed that its weapon had been the cause of the damage to the Gharari home, she said, “it is very likely that those casualties may have been caused by this weapon’s malfunction.” She added, “We associate the two.”

Aug. 6Tripoli

Attack on a Missile Depot

The Qaddafi government maintained an SA-2 anti-aircraft missile storage complex in this urban residential neighborhood.

The SA-2 is an old system, from the 1950s, famous for its use by the Soviet Union to shoot down the U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Francis Powers. The SA-2s require a radar system for target acquisition and receive guidance commands by radio signals that are readily jammed. The site held at least several dozen missiles and their boosters, a combination of powerful warheads and toxic rocket-fuel containers. Civilian dwellings and businesses were within about 30 yards of the fence, and perhaps 40 yards of the nearest bunkers.

NATO hit the place with at least two strikes. Ordnance slammed into the top of an empty bunker directly across the street from a row of businesses, which were destroyed. The strike on another bunker caused a powerful secondary explosion. Trees were tossed about like twigs. Many missiles and components were thrown around. Debris, including at least one missile and another booster, was sent into neighborhoods.

The destroyed businesses included an auto repair garage, a bathroom-and-kitchen shop and a toy store. Several apartments were badly damaged by the blast wave, others by fire.

A large piece of a broken vehicle struck the facade of a home owned by Kamen Sudani, shattering the front wall and causing a fire. Mr. Sudani, his wife and his son, Mohammed, were wounded. The child lost partial vision in his right eye.

The site is a mess. Leaking SA-2 fuel boosters lie scattered with dozens of damaged missiles. Neighbors pleaded for security and a cleanup.

JulyZlitan

Destruction of 4 Food Warehouses

These four concrete warehouses were used to store food, principally sacks of wheat and canned goods, said local men and doctors.

NATO aircraft struck them with ordnance in July, collapsing some structures and shattering others. Several African migrant workers lived on the grounds, local men said, but the small building where they lived was not hit.

The reasons for NATO’s attack were not clear. Two anti-Qaddafi fighters who lived across the street said that the site had no military use, and that after the warehouses’ destruction no military equipment was found.

Residents said one body was discovered in the rubble some time after the attack. Doctors at the hospital said that they had also heard the residents’ report but that since long-dead victims were not treated at the hospital they could not verify the account. Further, they said, in the last weeks of Colonel Qaddafi’s rule, the Security Ministry took many of the hospital’s registry records, which meant that it was not possible in Zlitan to obtain a death certificate from that period. Reports of this death could not be confirmed.

Aug. 4Zlitan

Destruction of a Family Home

Mustafa Naji al-Morabit’s home was located beside a property owned by Dr. Omram al-Shammam, who, his neighbors said, held a prominent medical position in Tripoli, the capital.

In late spring, after the siege in Misurata ended and rebels were moving toward Zlitan, Dr. Shammam’s residence became a meeting place for pro-Qaddafi military officers, neighbors said. Generals gathered there. Military traffic came and went. When this happened, the Morabits relocated, they said, fearing the Shammam buildings might be attacked.

By midsummer, as rebels closed in on Zlitan, the Qaddafi officers abandoned the Shammam compound, neighbors said. The Morabits returned home. On Aug. 4, after the family’s second night sleeping there, NATO aircraft attacked.

The bomb appeared to hit the front portion of the house, which was made of concrete. Mr. Morabit’s wife, Eptisam Ali al-Barbar, and two of their three children, Mohammed, 6, and Muatez, 3, were killed when the second story collapsed into the first-story front room where they were sleeping. His mother, Fatima Umar Mansour, suffered severe wounds to her lower left leg.

Her snapped shin has been reset with a plate and screws. The leg is swollen and appears infected. She has trouble walking.

NATO told Human Rights Watch that this was a command-and-control center. It appears, however, that the wrong house was struck, and that the intelligence was dated, as the Qaddafi officers had left the area two days before.

The home may have been struck by a so-called concrete, or inert, bomb. Witnesses said this strike had little or no fire associated with it. The house on the other side of the Morabit residence, perhaps 15 yards away, was largely undamaged. NATO declined to discuss the ordnance used but said fewer than 10 concrete bombs were used in the war.

Aug. 8Majer

Destruction of 4 Civilian Buildings

NATO struck four buildings in three rural compounds in a late-night attack during Ramadan. The alliance said the compounds were a command node and staging area for Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

The first house, owned by Ali Hamid Gafez, was hit about 11:30 p.m., the family said. It was crowded with relatives dislocated by the war, Mr. Gafez said. The bomb, according to an official roster of the dead, killed five women and seven children. Other people were wounded, including Mr. Gafez’s wife, Fatiya, who had her lower left leg amputated.

The second compound, owned by Altiya Musbah al-Jarud, was hit minutes later. Four men were killed, the family said.

After neighbors arrived to help search for victims, another bomb struck; this killed 18 men, the families said.

The third compound was under construction and unoccupied, both families said.

Doctors at the hospital confirmed a death toll of 34, many of them women and children.

NATO said that it had not confirmed any civilian victims and that a review of the strikes had found them valid. It has provided no supporting evidence.

What remains unclear is the affiliation of the dead men. The Qaddafi forces were supported by armed volunteers. The families deny that there was military activity or weapons at these places. Doctors who work for the anti-Qaddafi interim government said that the dead men wore civilian clothes, and that they treated no known military personnel that night.

A United Nations official said the attack was under review as potential violation of international humanitarian law. There were concerns about the reports of the follow-on attack by NATO, after the first strikes, which killed rescuers.

The families said a transparent review of NATO’s targeting decision would prove that the buildings had been occupied only by civilians, and that NATO had erred and had covered up the most lethal errant strike of the war.

April 27Misurata

Attack on Rebel Trucks at a Salt-Packaging Plant

The salt-packaging plant lies east of Misurata on a coastal road, exposing the city to attack. Rebels had dug a moat to its east, to slow any advance by the forces of Colonel Qaddafi.

On April 26, the loyalist forces attacked down the road but were stopped when NATO aircraft hit them with 500-pound laser-guided bombs, GBU-12s, near the moat. This was a tactical success.

The next day, the rebels salvaged weapons and ammunition from the Qaddafi forces’ trucks and returned to the plant to set up a blocking position. Their ambulance departed in the afternoon as rebels prayed and prepared lunch.

Moments after it left, the rebels were hit by a NATO airstrike. The ambulance rushed back. Three rebel trucks were destroyed, and half of a small building had collapsed, the driver and the doctor said. The driver parked on the plant’s opposite side because ammunition from burning trucks was exploding. He and the doctor returned on foot and helped two wounded men back to the ambulance.

There was a second strike then. It appeared to hit shipping containers, used as small buildings, just beside the first strike.

NATO’s attacks killed 12 anti-Qaddafi fighters and wounded three others. NATO rebutted survivors’ accounts. A spokesman, insisting on anonymity under ground rules imposed by NATO, said that he had checked “our facts as best as possible” and that “NATO cannot independently verify reports that these vehicles were operated by opposition forces.” He added that “there was no NATO attack on any building in or around Misurata.”

Searches of the ruined buildings, the debris and the strike site by The New York Times found signature components of GBU-12s, including fins, pieces of wing assemblies, internal parts and an external piece with writing that read “For Use On MK 82” — the American-made 500-pound bomb. A list of the dead was available hours after the attack.

NATO’s statements appear to have been false.

Othman Swei, the ambulance driver who survived the attack, suffered hearing damage. He said he forgave NATO for the attack. “I did not get angry,” he said. “They came to support us, and everyone makes mistakes. They gave us the biggest gift: they helped us make our freedom.”

But he and other men who lost friends were perplexed by NATO’s refusal after the strike to own up to it. Such denials were like the way Colonel Qaddafi’s spokesmen handled unsavory news, one man said.

“NATO has to admit they did this and say, ‘I am sorry,’” said Ramadan Aljabo. Mr. Aljabo mentioned a friend killed by the strikes who left a widow and young son. Without accountability, he said, the gravity of the mistakes risked being lost. “There is a child here,” he said, “who still asks his mother, ‘Where is my father?’”

Sept. 16Central Surt

Attack on an Apartment Building

This seven-story building was attacked during the time of Colonel Qaddafi’s last stand, in his hometown.

The building had dozens of units, most of which seem to have been abandoned. But several were not abandoned, including the apartment occupied by Mahmoud Zarog Massoud.

Mr. Massoud, his wife and their two daughters were in an upper-story apartment near the center of the building. His wife, Aisha Abdujodil, was killed, he and his neighbors said, after one arm was severed above the elbow and the other at the shoulder. He suffered a severe hand injury. One daughter was wounded.

Ordnance remnants suggest that the building was struck by delayed-fuze bombs. The bomb said to have killed Ms. Abdujodil had first hit another wing of the building, penetrated at least two apartment units and exploded roughly level with their unit, blowing out walls and sending a blast wave and debris across the open air above the courtyard and into their unit. Ms. Abdujodil and Mr. Massoud were having dinner near the kitchen window when the explosion engulfed them.

Several neighbors and Mr. Massoud said there were probably more dead in the rubble, especially in a collapsed wing where several stores are tightly crushed together. Many families fled Surt before the strikes and have not returned. Some families left behind one or two relatives to watch over their property.

The reasons for this attack are not clear. NATO declined to comment or answer written questions about the strike.

Sept. 25East-Central Surt

Destruction of a General’s Home

This home was struck in the last weeks of fighting in Surt, when residents, many of them pro-Qaddafi, were packing into houses together as anti-Qaddafi forces tightened their grip on Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown.

NATO hit the home, occupied by the family of Brig. Gen. Musbah Ahmed Diyab, who served in Colonel Qaddafi’s military, about 4:30 a.m., neighbors said. At least one bomb collapsed the back side of the building. Neighbors and a family member said Genral Diyab and seven of his relatives were killed inside. Many of the bodies had to be dug out of the rubble.

All of the dead beside the general were women or children, said relatives and neighbors. The names of the seven others were Marjuhah Salem Zarog, the general’s mother; Antisar Ahmed Diyab, the general’s sister; Hesbah Musbah Diyab, about 11, the general’s daughter; Hannan Adulmajib Diyab, an adult relative; Diyab Omran Diyab, roughly a year old, who was a son of Hannan; Hamid Hamid Ali Diyab, who was roughly 10, and Ofran Diyab Ahmed Diyab, a nephew of General Diyab, who was about 2.

Four other people were wounded, neighbors said: a man, a woman and two children. One child, Sofian Musbah Ahmed Diyab, was described as the general’s son; he was seriously wounded, the neighbors said.

The reasons for the attack were not clear. NATO declined to comment or answer written questions about the strike.

April 7Near Brega

Attack on a Rebel Convoy

A rebel convoy of refurbished Qaddafi tanks and other vehicles was moving in secret toward the oil town of Brega, held by pro-Qaddafi forces, when it was repeatedly attacked by NATO aircraft. The assault hit the first major deployment of rebel armor and was at the end of the first week of NATO’s operation. It was a severe setback for the rebels on the eastern front. It took months for the rebels to regain momentum.

The attack killed several rebels and two civilians, survivors said.

After the rebels fled, the husks of tanks, armored vehicles, two buses and a cargo truck remained behind, beside craters. At least several strikes were from GBU-12s, based on fins and pieces of these weapons’ so-called wing assemblies gathered by The New York Times. In November, unexploded ordnance was also scattered about, including mortar rounds and Type 63 and Grad rockets. A dud aircraft bomb, which NATO had not reported to Libya’s new authorities, rested on rocky soil.

Rebels had marked their vehicles to distinguish them from the equipment of the Qaddafi government, painting many with large tri-colored rebel flags on turrets and yellow highlights on tank barrels. This did not help.

A shepherd, Abdul Rahman Ali Suleiman Sudani, said he was nearby during the first strikes and rushed with his cousins to help the wounded. As they approached, he said, NATO aircraft attacked again. A bomb exploded about 200 yards away. Two of his cousins were hit, he said. Both died. They were Abdul Salam Ali Sudani, 20, who had a large hole in his chest, and Suleiman Ali Sudani, 23, who was cut in half.

The strikes at the rebel convoy were among several in which survivors reported that NATO aircraft, after initial attacks, returned for follow-on strikes — a tactic that endangered civilians and appeared to conflict with NATO’s mandate from the United Nations to protect civilians.

Col. Gregory Julian, a NATO spokesman, said the alliance would reconsider the tactic’s rationale as part of its internal campaign review. “That’s a valid point,” he said.

The strikes — pointing to questions of tactics and of shortfalls in target-vetting — have also been a source of persistent intrigue, as factions of anti-Qaddafi forces blame misleading intelligence supplied by their former military commander, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, once a high-ranking military leader under Colonel Qaddafi. They accuse him of betraying and sabotaging the eastern military campaign by providing the information that led to the attack near Brega. In the summer, General Younes was assassinated by the rebels.