Gaddafi taunts NATO on state TV

“I tell the cowardly crusader (NATO) that I live in a place they cannot reach and where you cannot kill me …. I live in the hearts of the millions,” the recording which was broadcast on al-Jamahiriya television said.

Earlier, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters in Italy that he believed what he had been told by Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Catholic bishop in Tripoli, that, “Gaddafi was most probably outside Tripoli and probably even wounded” by NATO airstrikes.

Early this morning RAF Tornados and Typhoons delivered more airstrikes in the capital of Tripoli.

Libyan state television showed footage of Colonel Gaddafi meeting and talking with what it said were tribal leaders in a Tripoli hotel. A presenter said the meeting took place on Wednesday.

However, Muammar Gaddafi has not appeared in public since 30 April, when a NATO air strike on a house in the capital killed his youngest son and three of his grandchildren.

“We tell the world: ‘Those are the representatives of the Libyan tribes’,” Gaddafi said as he pointed to his visitors and then named some of them.

He was wearing a brown robe with a hat and sunglasses and sat in an armchair near a small round table.

A man then told him: “You will be victorious.”

A Libyan government spokesman today denied as “nonsense” reports that the embattled leader had been harmed.

The leader is in high morale. He’s in good spirits. He is leading the country day by day. He hasn’t been harmed at all,” Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli.

In a separate interview published online the Italian Foreign Minister also said he did not believe the footage of Gaddafi and the tribal leaders was authentic.

“I strongly doubted that those images were taken on that day and above all in Tripoli,” Frattini said.

“There are people on the ground who have the pulse of the situation…Among many others I am referring to Bishop Martinelli, who has had, and still has, close relations with the regime,” he said.

He added: “The international pressure has likely led Gaddafi to decide to seek shelter in a safe location. I tend to think that he fled Tripoli, not Libya.”

As the Vatican’s top official in Tripoli, Martinelli has been in contact with Gaddafi’s entourage.

A NATO official said there was no way to confirm Frattini’s comments.

Brega deaths

Libyan state tv have on Friday broadcast images of what they say is the aftermath of a NATO airstrike on the city of Brega. The attack was said to have killed 16 civilians and wounded up to 40 more.

Libyan tv says the dead included 11 Muslim clerics who were killed in their sleep. NATO said it had no immediate comment on the reports.

Misrata

As fighting between government forces and rebels continues in Libya, a British destroyer battleship has been forced to defend itself after being targeted by Libyan rockets off the coast of Misrata.

The attack took place as HMS Liverpool tried to intercept a vessel suspected of laying mines in the port of Misrata.

The besieged western city has relied on its port for supplies and the evacuation of civilians as fierce fighting continues.