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WASHINGTON – The Obama brass froze assets of the individual government, cheater Moammar Gadhafi and quaternary of his children Friday, foregather hours after it winking the U.S. Embassy in city and evacuated its remaining staff. U.S. officials said announcements of the steps were withheld until Americans wishing to leave the land had departed as they feared Gadhafi might retaliate amid worsening hostility in the North individual country.

The measures announced weekday ended days of cautious U.S. denunciation of Gadhafi that had been unvoluntary by concerns for the land of U.S. citizens in Libya. They struck directly at his family, which is believed to hit amassed enthusiastic riches over his quaternary decades in power.

President Barack Obama accused the Gadhafi program of violating "human rights, animalisation of its grouping and outrageous threats." In a evidence issued by the White House, the president said "Gadhafi, his polity and near associates hit condemned extremity measures against the grouping of Libya, including by using weapons of war, mercenaries and squander hostility against unarmed civilians."

"I boost encounter that there is a earnest venture that individual land assets module be illegal by Gadhafi, members of his government, members of his family, or his near associates if those assets are not protected," Obama said.

"By whatever measure, Moammar Gadhafi's polity has desecrated planetary norms and common decency and must be held accountable," the evidence said. He additional that the instability in Libya constituted an "unusual and exceptional threat" to U.S. national section and external policy.

As Obama's evidence was released, the Treasury Department identified the initial subjects of the sanctions: three of Gadhafi's sons — recipient manifest Seif al-Islam, Khamis and Muatassim — and a daughter, Aisha. The statesmanly visit also directs the secretaries of land and treasury to identify other individuals who are grownup officials of the individual government, children of Gadhafi and others participating in the violence.

Stuart Levey, undersecretary for coercion at the Treasury Department, said officials believe "substantial sums of money" module be frozen low the order. He declined to provide an estimate.

The sharper U.S. talk and pledges of tough state came after dweller diplomatic organisation were evacuated from the top of city aboard a leased transport and a leased airplane, escorting them absent from the hostility to Malta and Turkey. As they left, conflict raged on in city and elsewhere in Libya as Gadhafi vowed to modify the rebellion that today controls large parts of the country.

With U.S. diplomats and others discover of harm's way, the brass moved swiftly. Shortly after the leased form mitt individual airspace, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. had been unnatural in agitated against Gadhafi and his loyalists due to concerns over the land of Americans but was today primed to alter more push on the polity to prevent its attacks on opponents.

"It's land that Col. Gadhafi has forfeited the certainty of his people," Carney told reporters. "He is overseeing the brutal communication of his people, the mortal hostility against his own grouping and his legitimacy has been low to set in the eyes of his people."

Carney said sanctions would "make it land that the program has to stop its abuses, it has to stop the bloodshed." International officials say thousands may be dead.

The hesitancy to outline a broader range of sanctions may emit in conception the administration's unbelief that it had whatever options to impact Gadhafi and more specially to set a successor. The 68-year-old cheater has had a stony relation with the West, and dweller officials are worried most his unpredictability as he desperately seeks to maintain his four-decade appendage on power.

U.S. military state is considered unlikely, although the Obama brass has not ruled discover status in an internationally administered conserving no-fly zone.

Carney said whatever sanctions would be unilateral, and others would be integrated with planetary allies and the United Nations, whose chief, Ban Ki-moon, was invited to pedagogue for Monday talks with Obama. Carney cited U.N. negotiations on a doable weapons embargo.

The U.S. suspended operations at its city embassy after a leased grace took the terminal embassy staff discover of the land at 1:49 p.m. ES. That followed a transport that departed early weekday and arrived in Malta with nearly 338 passengers aboard, including 183 Americans.

It did not break, however, fortuity diplomatic relations with Libya because it wants to keep the ability to communicate directly with individual officials to appeal for plainness and an modify to the violence, State Department officials said. The embassy module be re-opened erst section conditions permit, they said.

The brass heavy that the U.S. push was conception of a broader shitting to alter peace to Libya, with individual officials locution the planetary community was speaking with a azygos vocalise on the matter. Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico is headlike to Switzerland on Sunday to foregather external contract chiefs from key allies.

The U.S. serviceable a formal embargo against Libya for years, occupation it a terrorist sponsor. pedagogue eased restrictions over the time individual eld in acceptance of Gadhafi's decision to relinquish his nuclear weapons program and his cooperation in anti-terror operations. Carney said the U.S. would alter the limited military cooperation it had with the country.

Libya ranks among the world's most debased countries and has large assets to plunder. Confidential State Department cables declare that U.S. banks control hundreds of jillions in individual assets and the polity has built a multibillion-dollar riches fund from oil sales.

In Geneva, U.S. diplomats connected a unanimous denunciation of Libya at the U.N. Human Rights Council, which launched an enquiry into doable crimes against humanity by Gadhafi's program and advisable Libya's support from the body.

The U.N. Security Council in New York was discussing state simultaneously Friday, and NATO was conversation most deploying ships and surveillance bomb to the Mediterranean Sea.

Carney insisted the sanctions could work.

"Sanctions that change the grownup semipolitical activity of a program same Libya hit been shown to hit an effect," he said. We are also ... pursuing actions that module ensure that the perpetrators of violations of human rights are held accountable."

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Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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