NATO rocked Tripoli on Tuesday with some of the heaviest airstrikes yet since the start of the two-month-old alliance bombing campaign, as international pressure on Muammar Gaddafi mounted.

NATO rocked Tripoli on Tuesday with some of the heaviest airstrikes yet since the start of the two-month-old alliance bombing campaign, as international pressure on Muammar Gaddafi mounted.

More than 20 airstrikes rocked the area around Gaddafi's residential compound. The rapid succession of strikes, all within less than half an hour, rattled windows and sent heavy, acrid-smelling plumes of smoke over the city, including from close to Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound.

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said at least three people were killed and dozens wounded, adding that the strikes had targeted a deserted military barracks but which instead hit civilians living nearby.

NATO rejected the strikes had targeted a barracks and said a vehicle storage facility had been struck.
"Overnight a regime vehicle storage facility adjacent to the Bab al-Aziziyah complex in Tripoli was struck by NATO aircraft using a number of precision guided weapons," said the NATO operation's commander Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard in a statement on Tuesday.

Led by France, Britain and the United States, NATO warplanes have been bombing Libya for more than two months since the United Nations authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians from Gaddafi's forces in the country's civil war.

Meanwhile, US president Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron said Gaddafi would "inevitably" be forced from power.
"We have degraded his war machine and prevented a humanitarian catastrophe. And we will continue to enforce the UN resolutions with our allies until they are completely complied with," Obama and Cameron, wrote in The Times newspaper on Tuesday.

FRANCE, BRITIAN TO DEPLOY HELICOPTERS
For their part, France and Britain said they would provide attack helicopters for NATO's air campaign as the EU widened sanctions against Gaddafi’s forces.

French ministers said the helicopters, a weapon that has yet to be used by NATO in Libya, will help the Western alliance strike regime military assets hidden in urban areas while avoiding civilian casualties.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, on the sidelines of meetings of European Union foreign and defense ministers in Brussels, said Paris was deploying Tigre and Gazelle class helicopters aboard an aircraft carrier.

French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said separately that London would deploy helicopters aboard its HMS Ocean aircraft carrier as soon as possible.