NATO warns Gaddafi over use of civilian facilities

The alliance warned on Tuesday it would target facilities including factories, warehouses and agricultural sites being used by loyalist troops.

The warning came a day after foreign reporters were taken to Zliten, east of Tripoli, by government minders and shown what they were told was the remains of a clinic hit by a NATO bomb that killed seven people.

Alliance military spokesman Colonel Roland Lavoie said in Brussels that in recent days NATO had hit a concrete factory near Brega where regime forces were hiding and firing multi-barrel rocket launchers.

"Pro-Gaddafi forces are increasingly occupying facilities which once held a civilian purpose," Lavoie told reporters in a video conference from the operation's headquarters in Naples, Italy.

"By occupying and using these facilities the regime has transformed them into military installations from which it commands and conducts attacks, causing them to lose their formerly protected status and rendering them valid and necessary military objectives for NATO," Lavoie said.

Earlier, a NATO official said the alliance had "no evidence" that civilian facilities were hit in air raids near Zliten on Monday.

Baghdadi Mahmudi, the Libyan premier, reiterated on Tuesday that Gaddafi's departure is "not up for discussion," after meeting UN special envoy to Libya Abdul Ilah al-Khatib.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya Laurence Hart said in a statement a week-long fact-finding UN mission to Libya had identified several problems besetting Gaddafi's regime, which has been battling rebel forces for the past five months.

"Although the mission observed aspects of normalcy in Tripoli, members identified pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance," Hart's statement said.

The health sector is under strain, having lost thousands of foreign workers at the beginning of the conflict, it said.

"Medical supplies, including vaccines, are rapidly running low ... although basic food items are available in the markets, prices are rising and there are concerns over the sustainability of supplies into the city especially as the (Muslim) holy month of Ramadan approaches," it added.

Fuel shortages had become a "pressing problem" while reduced availability of cash was a "serious concern."

And in Benghazi, the rebel capital in the east of the country, a group of Libyan expats on Tuesday became the first to take a stab at forming a new political party since the start of the uprising in February.

"We call ourselves the New Libya Party because everything was destroyed," said Ramadan Ben Amer, 53, a co-founder of the party, which is the offshoot of an online news website that he helped launch in late February to support the revolution.

He said that of the 2,000 individuals who have joined the party in Libya so far, the majority hail from his native Benghazi or Derna, the hometown of co-founder Rajad Mabruk, 65, who lives in Dallas, Texas.

New Libya, he added, also has some 20,000 supporters among Libyan expats living in the United States, Canada and Germany.