“We do have a lot of intelligence reporting about Qaddafi taking the bodies of the people he’s killed and putting them at the sites where we’ve attacked,” Gates said according to interview excerpts released by CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer” program, which will air on Sunday.
Government officials have been taking foreign journalists covering the violence in Libya to bomb sites to show that the allied bombings were hitting civilians. Last week Libyan officials said nearly 100 civilians had been killed in the coalition strikes.
“The truth of the matter is we have trouble coming up with proof of any civilian casualties that we have been responsible for,” Gates responded.
On Saturday, Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes recaptured the strategic town of Ajdabiyah, signaling that the tide may be turning against Qaddafi’s forces in the east.
In the west, France said its warplanes destroyed five Libyan aircraft and two helicopters at an air base outside rebel-held Misrata on Saturday. Pro-Qaddafi forces had earlier pounded the city with tank, mortar and artillery fire that halted only as coalition aircraft appeared overhead, rebels said.
Western governments hope the raids, launched with the aim of protecting civilians, will also shift the balance of power in favor of the Arab world’s most violent popular revolt.
Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in the capital Tripoli that Qaddafi was directing his forces but appeared to suggest the leader might be moving around the country so as to keep his whereabouts a mystery.
“He is leading the battle. He is leading the nation forward from anywhere in the country,” said Ibrahim.
“He has many offices, many places around Libya. I assure you he is leading the nation at this very moment and he is in continuous communication with everyone around the country.”
Asked if Qaddafi was constantly on the move, Ibrahim said: “It’s a time of war. In a time of war you act differently.”
One resident in Misrata said 115 people had been killed in the city in a week and that snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.
In Ajdabiyah, rebel fighters danced on tanks, waved flags and fired in the air near buildings riddled with bullet holes. Half a dozen wrecked tanks lay near the eastern entrance to the town and the ground was strewn with empty shell casings.
Rebels said fighting had lasted through Friday night into Saturday. By the town’s western gate there were bodies of more than a dozen of Qaddafi’s fighters. An abandoned truckload of ammunition suggested his forces had beaten a hasty retreat.
“Thank you Britain, thank you France, thank you America,” said one rebel, praising the Western air strikes against Qaddafi’s forces.
Capturing Ajdabiyah, a gateway from western Libya to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the oil town of Tobruk, was a big morale boost for the rebels a week after coalition air strikes began to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone.
In Misrata, the only big insurgent stronghold left in Libya’s west, cut off from the main rebel force to the east, shelling by Qaddafi’s forces fell silent on Saturday when Western coalition planes appeared in the sky, rebels said.
Libya’s third city is only about 200 km (120 miles) from the capital and Qaddafi can ill afford to leave it in the hands of anti-government protesters.
“He pulled his forces out of Ajdabiyah and Brega so that he puts all his weight in attacking Misrata and winning so he can control the whole west versus losing the whole east,” a rebel, called Saadoun, said by telephone.
The French armed forces said around 20 French aircraft supported by an AWACS surveillance plane struck targets during the day on Saturday, including five Galeb fighter jets and two MI-35 helicopters on the ground outside Misrata.
Rebels said they had seized control on Saturday of the oil port of Brega, 70 km (45 miles) west along the Mediterranean coast from Ajdabiyah. But there was no independent confirmation.
Brega, site of an oil export terminal and refinery, sprawls over a large area and overall control can be hard to determine.
“Brega is 100 percent in the hands of liberating forces,” said Shamsiddin Abdulmolah, a rebel spokesman in Benghazi.
US President Barack Obama, criticized by US politicians across the spectrum for failing to communicate the goals of the air campaign, told Americans that the military mission in Libya was clear, focused and limited.
He said it had already saved countless civilian lives.
Obama said Libya’s air defenses had been disabled, Qaddafi’s forces were no longer advancing and, in places like Benghazi, his forces had been pushed back.
“So make no mistake, because we acted quickly, a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians — innocent men, women and children — have been saved,” Obama said in a weekly radio address.
Obama, due to speak to Americans about Libya again on Monday evening, had also been faulted by fellow politicians for taking on another military mission in a Muslim country with the United States embroiled in the Iraq and Afghan wars.
NATO has agreed to take over that role in enforcing the no-fly zone and arms embargo against Libya, but final details have not yet been worked out for the military alliance to take over the air strikes on Qaddafi’s military and its equipment.
Libyan state television was broadcasting occasional, brief news reports of the air strikes. Mostly it showed footage — some of it grainy images years old — of cheering crowds waving green flags and carrying portraits of Qaddafi.
