US and European military forces have bombarded Libya with cruise missiles and air attacks as part of a broad international effort to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone more than a month after the outbreak of an uprising against longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.
French jets fired the first shots on Saturday in Operation Odyssey Dawn, the biggest international military intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles in eastern Libya.
Hours later, US and British warships and submarines launched more than 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles at more than 20 coastal targets to clear the way for air patrols to ground Libya's air force.
An unnamed US national security official said the air defences of Libya have been "severely crippled" by the barrage of missile strikes.
"Gaddafi's air defence systems have been severely disabled. It's too soon to predict what he and his ground forces may do in response to today's strikes," the military source said, on condition of anonymity.
Major-General John Lorimer, a British military spokesman, said British fighter jets also had been used to bombard the north African nation.
Anti-aircraft guns could be heard firing overnight in Tripoli. Libyan state television later said civilian areas of the capital and fuel-storage tanks that supplied Misurata had been hit.
It also claimed that 48 people had been killed and 150 others wounded in the attacks, but Al Jazeera could not independently verify that report.
In Tripoli, residents said they had heard an explosion near the eastern Tajoura district, while in Misurata they said strikes had targeted a regime airbase.
Several thousand people gathered at the Bab al-Azizia palace, a compound in the capital which was bombed by US warplanes in 1986.
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