NATO Strike Kills 7 at Libya Hospital

Engineering school also hit, Brits call it 'spy HQ'

A NATO airstrike killed seven people in a hospital in Zlitan, western Libya, on Monday, according to locals and government officials. Medical equipment was visible among the twisted wreckage of the building, the Associated Press reports, after being taken on a government tour of the site.

“In this whole area there is no military,” an ambulance driver told the AP.

Zlitan is in the Misrata District, and has been attacked by rebel forces from the district capital of Misrata several times over the past few months, though attempts to capture the town have, as elsewhere, failed.

Gadhafi’s minders also showed off several food warehouses they say were damaged in strikes, still on fire during the tour.

The dead included three doctors. NATO is refusing to release information on the strike before Tuesday.

Also Monday, British jets bombed the Central Organization for Electronic Research, an engineering academy that Major General Nick Pope said was cover for Libyan intelligence services and Gadhafi’s “nefarious activities.”

Though several civilian targets have been hit in NATO’s air war, they have usually denied it or claimed that the sites were military in nature. These claims will be difficult to make about a hospital.

Author: Jeremy Sapienza

Jeremy Sapienza is Senior Editor at Antiwar.com