Jonathan Miller is taken to see evidence of a civilian hit on the outskirts of Tripoli, but is everything just as it seems?
It is now 1pm in Libya and about one hour ago we were taken by our government minders to Tujura which is 10 to 15 miles east of Tripoli city centre. Its mosque has been a focus of past protests against Gaddafi on Fridays.
Instead of going to Tujura, to the city centre or the central mosque, we turn off the road into a residential compound. We are shown a house which the Libyans say was hit by a missile at 9pm last night.
There are fragments of missiles lying around the garden outside the house. One piece I have found is clearly marked “made in the USA”. The missile has appeared to have glanced off a wall outside the house and embedded itself under a palm tree, spraying shrapnel into nearby walls, but causing minimal damage. There is clear evidence of what appears to be embellishment of the impact seen on location with 762 calibre automatic weapon bullet holes coming from a different direction to the shrapnel from the missile impact.
It’s virtually impossible to determine what may have happened here. But we know that the Libyan armed forces regularly shift the location of their mobile anti-aircraft guns. One of these could have been the target of a small air to surface missile if that is indeed what happened. The Libyan authorities say that this is clear evidence of coalition strike on a civilian property.
It is the first time that journalists have been taken somewhere by the government minders to what is clearly a civilian house which has been hit by the incoming coalition fire.
The man who lives in the house has three young girls who were in it at the time. None were injured but one said that at about 9pm there was a loud noise, a ball of flames and lots of smoke. The windows of the family’s sitting room have been blown in, possibly from the back draft.
The location of the property is about 1 km from the Mediterranean coast on the outskirts of Tujura. One the way from Tripoli, we saw what appears to be the still smouldering remains of a Libyan radar installation which we know was a target in Coalition air strikes on Thursday night.