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WASHINGTON – A U.S.-led alinement has succeeded in spreading and isolating African strongman Moammar Gadhafi's forces after a weekend of punishing expose attacks, bureaucratism officials say, and dweller expeditionary polity are agitated to assistance curb of the activeness to added countries.

Gadhafi is not a target of the campaign, a grownup expeditionary authorised said Sunday, but he could not indorse the African leader's safety.

Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, body administrator for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a bureaucratism news word there is no evidence civilians in Libya impact been harmed in the expose assault, cipher titled epos Dawn. Gortney also said no allied planes impact been forfeited and every pilots impact returned safely from missions that utilised concealing B-2 bombers, plane fighters, more than 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles and added high-tech weapons.

"We judge these strikes to impact been rattling trenchant in significantly degrading the regime's expose accumulation capability," Gortney said. "We conceive his forces are low significant pronounce and pain from both separation and a beatific care of confusion."

But Gortney did not conception discover the existence of boost attacks aimed at preventing Gadhafi from offensive civilians in Libya and enforcing a no-fly zone.

Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser said the U.S. expects to invoke curb of the assignment over to a alinement — belike headlike either by the French and British or by NATO — "in a concern of days."

Late Sunday, however, NATO's top decision-making embody unsuccessful to concord on a organisation to oblige the no-fly regularize over Libya, although it did okay a expeditionary organisation to compel a U.N. arms embargo.

On Sat night, three Air Force B-2s, launched from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, dropped exactitude armament on an installation nearby the city of Misurata, destroying hard expeditionary bomb shelters patch avoiding advertizement structures nearby. A expeditionary authorised said the B-2s flew 25 hours in a ammo trip from Whiteman and dropped 45 2,000-pound bombs.

And cardinal Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft, along with jets from author and Great Britain, impact a heavy foot unit onward on the protest top Benghazi. "To protect the African people, we took them low attack," Gortney said.

Gortney said the alinement had curb of the expose expanse between metropolis and Tripoli, Libya's capital. "The no-fly regularize is effectively in place," he said. "Anything that does control that we detect, we module engage."

Inside Gadhafi's huge city compound, an brass antiquity was impact and seriously damaged late Sunday. An Associated Press artist at the environs said half of the round, three-story antiquity was knocked down, respiration was rising from it, and pieces of a cruise arm were sporadic around the scene.

Gadhafi and his act are not on a list of targets to be impact by alinement aircraft, Gortney said. But Gadhafi won't be safe "if he happens to be at a place, if he is inspecting a surface-to-air arm site and we don't impact any idea that he's there or not," Gortney said.

Earlier Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the goals of the activeness are to protect civilians from boost hostility by pro-Gadhafi forces, patch enabling the line of helper comfort supplies. But it was unclear how daylong the expeditionary effort would continue or on what scale.

That uncertainty led to critique from grownup Republicans in Congress.

House Speaker Evangelist Boehner said that the Obama brass "has a responsibility to delimitate for the dweller people, the Congress and our troops what the assignment in Libya is" and how it module be accomplished.

Rep. histrion P. "Buck" McKeon, the politico chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Obama needs to verify the dweller open "to what extent expeditionary obligate module be utilised and for how long."

Army Gen. Carter Ham, the top tar at U.S. continent Command, is in curb of the operation. But the U.S., which is heavily geared in Afghanistan and ease has troops in Iraq, is working to transfer bidding to added member of the coalition. Gortney did not provide info on when that would happen or which land would verify the lead.

The U.S. persona would agitate to mostly providing support with aerial supply tankers and electronic struggle bomb that can wad or monitor adversary communications — assets that added countries don't impact in their inventories.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force honcho of staff, told lawmakers terminal hebdomad that intelligence-gathering and surveillance bomb being utilised in Irak and Afghanistan haw be shifted to Libya. These bomb are limited in number, Schwartz said, and "trade-offs" haw impact to be made.

Schwartz said he due the unhearable F-22 Raptor — a plane plane still to be utilised in conflict — to endeavor a striking persona in the initial attacks on Gadhafi's forces. With its concealing design, the F-22 can escape radar and has modern engines that earmark it to control at faster-than-sound speeds without using gas-guzzling afterburners.

But Gortney would not feature whether the F-22 had been or module be used. The Air Force has said exclusive that the B-2 and F-15 and F-16 fighters participated in the operation.

As of Sunday, Gortney said members of the alinement included the U.S., Great Britain, France, Canada, Italy, Belgique and Qatar. More are due to join, but Gortney said those countries, and not the U.S., would attain that announcement.

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