British Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Britain’s Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. David Richards will meet US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

“The meeting will be about how we can put military pressure on the regime, and that will include the tooth and the tail — the people pulling the trigger to kill civilians in Misrata and the people supplying them,” a Ministry of Defense source said.

Qaddafi’s forces, meanwhile, tried on Tuesday to deny fighters in Misrata their only lifeline to the outside world by shelling the port and the areas around it, rebels and residents said.

Misrata is encircled on three sides and depends on its Mediterranean port to bring in supplies.

“The troops launched an attack on an eastern area in a bid to control the port. Fierce fighting is taking place there now,” said Abdelsalam, an opposition spokesman. “There are three martyrs and 10 wounded.”

Another spokesman, called Bashir, said Qaddafi’s forces were using Grad missiles — Russian-made munitions fired in multiple rounds from launchers on the back of trucks — to attack the port.

Libyan officials deny killing civilians, saying they are fighting armed gangs and Al-Qaeda sympathizers who are seeking to destroy the country.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, slammed the airstrikes, saying attacks on Qaddafi’s palaces suggest the aim is to kill the Libyan leader.

“There was talk about a no-fly zone. OK. But where’s the no-fly zone if every night they’re bombing palaces where Qaddafi lives?” Putin said during a visit to Denmark.

“They say, ‘No, we don’t want to destroy him.’ Then why bomb the palaces? Is that how they drive out the mice?”

Libya called on the African Union on Tuesday to hold an emergency summit meeting to discuss how to deal with western airstrikes.

Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi accused the West of aiming “to punish Africa through Libya” and to “steal its wealth and colonize it again.”

He told the Peace and Security Council of the 53-nation AU in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa the organization should invoke a mutual defense pact in response to airstrikes.

“My delegation proposes the holding as soon as possible of an extraordinary session of the Assembly of the Union,” he said.