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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 hand control of the operation to added countries.

Gadhafi is not a direct 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 programme conference there is no grounds civilians in Libya impact been harmed in the expose assault, cipher titled epos Dawn. Gortney also said no united planes impact been forfeited and all pilots impact returned safely from missions that utilised concealing B-2 bombers, plane fighters, more than 120 Tomahawk voyage missiles and added high-tech weapons.

"We judge these strikes to impact been very effective in significantly degrading the regime's expose defense capability," Gortney said. "We believe his forces are low momentous pronounce and pain from both separation and a beatific care of confusion."

But Gortney did not rule discover the possibility of further 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 turn control of the assignment over to a alinement — probably headlike either by the French and British or by NATO — "in a concern of days."

Late Sunday, however, NATO's crowning decision-making embody unsuccessful to concord on a organisation to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya, though it did okay a expeditionary organisation to compel a U.N. blazonry embargo.

On Saturday night, threesome Air Force B-2s, launched from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, dropped exactitude armament on an installation nearby the municipality of Misurata, destroying hardened expeditionary bomb shelters while 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 fifteen Air Force and serviceman Corps aircraft, along with jets from author and Great Britain, impact a onerous foot organisation onward on the rebel top Benghazi. "To protect the African people, we took them low attack," Gortney said.

Gortney said the alinement had control of the expose expanse between Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya's capital. "The no-fly zone 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 badly dilapidated New Sunday. An Associated Press artist at the scene said half of the round, three-story antiquity was knocked down, respiration was rising from it, and pieces of a voyage arm were sporadic around the scene.

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

Earlier Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the goals of the operation are to protect civilians from further hostility by pro-Gadhafi forces, while sanctioning the line of humanitarian relief supplies. But it was blurred how long the expeditionary try would continue or on what scale.

That uncertainty led to critique from grownup Republicans in Congress.

House Speaker John Boehner said that the Obama brass "has a domain to define for the dweller people, the legislature and our personnel what the assignment in Libya is" and how it module be accomplished.

Rep. histrion P. "Buck" McKeon, the Republican chair 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 crowning officer at U.S. Africa Command, is in control of the operation. But the U.S., which is hard engaged in Afghanistan and ease has personnel in Iraq, is working to transfer bidding to added member of the coalition. Gortney did not wage info on when that would hap or which country would verify the lead.

The U.S. persona would shift to mostly providing hold with aery supply tankers and electronic struggle bomb that can wad or guardian enemy subject — assets that added countries don't impact in their inventories.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force honcho of staff, told lawmakers last hebdomad that intelligence-gathering and surveillance bomb existence 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 expected the unhearable F-22 Raptor — a plane fighter still to be utilised in conflict — to play a striking persona in the initial attacks on Gadhafi's forces. With its concealing design, the F-22 can evade radiolocation and has advanced 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 only 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. solon are expected to join, but Gortney said those countries, and not the U.S., would attain that announcement.

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