Did I miss a report on this somewhere or is the sum total of evidence that anyone was killed in the strike the say-so of a Qaddafi spokesgoon? There’s no question that a building west of Tripoli was hit, but as of this writing there are no photos of the bodies and no independent confirmation from anyone, including NATO, that any little Qaddafis are dead. The best evidence I can find that something unusual happened is this bit from a BBC reporter inside the city:
Earlier this evening we heard three enormous explosions to the west of the city. Normally we are taken to the bomb sites within an hour, but tonight there were a lot of concerned faces around the hotel, a lot of whispering and secrecy.
Two hours later we were eventually brought to the villa, which was surrounded by reinforced concrete, cameras, and military positions. This is clearly an exclusive neighbourhood. Inside, total destruction.
There were signs there had been a family gathering. There were no bodies in the house, they had been removed, and we are reliant on the government’s account of what happened.
According to the spokesman, Qaddafi and his wife were there visiting Saif yet somehow escaped uninjured despite the “total destruction” and alleged deaths of his family inside. Reporters from the Journal who toured the scene say the devastation was so severe that “It was unclear how anyone inside could have survived” — and yet the Brother Leader allegedly did. Hmmmm. Daily Beast correspondent Fadel Lamen phoned half a dozen sources to try to corroborate the story, and they’re suspicious too:
My Tripoli sources confirm an attack on one of the regime’s buildings frequented by another of his sons, Hanibal Gaddafi—but not Gaddafi himself, his wife or the other sons. In fact, one of my sources, acquainted with the family’s habits, maintained that the family almost never gets together, especially given the current circumstances, which makes the idea of a NATO strike that somehow hit a nest of Gaddafis (sparing the leader, of course) seem a bit far-fetched.
