Kadafi Emerges, Calls Raid Crazy : Ends Speculation on His Fate, Vows ‘We Will Never Retreat’

Col. Moammar Kadafi, looking and sounding exhausted, appeared on Libyan television late Wednesday night, ending nearly two days of speculation over whether he had been killed in the U.S. air strikes that destroyed his Tripoli headquarters.

Obviously tired but otherwise appearing well, Kadafi condemned the air raid, conducted early Tuesday, as an “unjust” and “crazy” act but said Libya will not “stoop to (President) Reagan’s level” by killing children. Kadafi’s 15-month-old adopted daughter was reportedly killed in the raid, and his two youngest sons were severely injured.

“We tell Reagan that he does not need to protect his children and his people,” Kadafi said. “We do not bomb children like the United States does. . . . We are not like you. We do not bombard cities.”

Earlier Wednesday, the sky over the capital lit up with anti-aircraft fire, and gunfire ricocheted around the Libyan strongman’s headquarters compound, triggering speculation that army units might be leading a mutiny against Kadafi and the elite militia unit that protects him. But government officials denied that the gunfire signaled factional fighting or threatened the regime.

Anti-aircraft crews first opened up in mid-afternoon at what spokesmen later said was a high-flying U.S. reconnaissance jet. The Libyans also reported new U.S. air attacks against Tripoli and towns south and east of the capital.

In Washington, the Pentagon denied that any new attack was under way, but sources told the Associated Press that reconnaissance planes had flown over Libya.

Kadafi declared that the U.S. aerial attack, which he said was aimed at “my tent,” had failed. “We will never retreat. . . . We will not abandon our incitement of popular revolution, whatever raids they carry out.”

In his 21-minute TV speech, Kadafi denounced both Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who allowed F-111 fighter-bombers participating in the raid to take off from air bases in Britain.

But he made no specific threats against either country and indeed appeared to suggest that Libya would exercise restraint following the air strikes, which are now believed to have killed at least 70 people and injured more than 100, including many civilians, around Tripoli and Benghazi.

Kadafi said he would continue to support anti-Western guerrilla groups but disclaimed responsibility for terrorist attacks on Americans. He said he had not issued orders to murder anyone, alluding to U.S. allegations that the Libyan government plotted the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub April 5 in which a U.S. soldier was killed.

“Even those who carried out operations in Europe are unknown persons,” he said. “Who knows them?”

In the air raid, staged by waves of U.S. warplanes, one bomb was dropped just 10 yards from the Kadafi residence in his fortress headquarters here.

Kadafi said he aborted a Libyan retaliatory strike against a U.S. communications facility in the Mediterranean on Tuesday because Greece, Malta and other friendly Mediterranean nations had asked him to show restraint. In that incident, two Libyan gunboats fired missiles at a U.S. telecommunications site on the Italian island of Lampedusa, 200 miles north of Tripoli, but apparently did no damage.

Wanted to Do More

Kadafi said he had wanted “to do more” after the U.S. raid but decided to “stop any military actions against Southern Europe” following the appeal.

“It is honorable for us to fight the United States, Britain and NATO. If they force us to fight, we are ready,” Kadafi said.

Kadafi, wearing a white naval commander’s uniform with gold braid, spoke in an uncharacteristically somber and subdued voice, devoid of the passion with which he usually denounces the United States. He sat behind a desk during his address but stood up at the end. There were dark circles under his eyes from an evident lack of sleep.

The mood in the capital since the strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi, 400 miles east of here, has grown increasingly tense, with groups of armed men patrolling the streets and jittery air defense gunners opening fire with hundreds of rounds of anti-aircraft fire and tracer bullets at even the rumor of planes.

Kadafi, seeking to ease the tension, told Libyans in his broadcast address that the crisis was over and urged them to return to normal life.

“It’s all over. Turn on everything--the lights, the TVs. Go back to normal,” he said.

Shortly afterward, the blackout that had been in effect in Tripoli for the past two nights was lifted briefly. Several hundred people, shouting and honking their car horns, converged on the city’s central Green Square for a noisy demonstration in support of Kadafi.

Given the Libyan leader’s known love of publicity, his absence from public view struck diplomats here as strange. Speculation over his fate heightened earlier Wednesday when reporters were taken on a tour of the Aziziya Barracks, where Kadafi sometimes lives.

20-Foot-Wide Crater

Contrary to earlier descriptions given to reporters by a German witness who works for the Libyan government, the compound was heavily damaged.

The two-story house where Kadafi’s family lived was still standing but badly damaged by the impact of a large bomb that landed 15 yards in front of it, creating a crater about 3 feet deep and 20 feet wide.

The masonry on the front of the house was blown away and the interior rooms were buried in the rubble of fallen ceilings and partially collapsed walls.

A few hundred yards from the house, another large crater scarred a tennis court, set about 50 yards back from the tent where Kadafi often receives visitors and sometimes sleeps. He was said to have been sleeping there on the night of the air strikes, and in one corner of the large tent was an unmade bed, its blankets and lace-fringed sheets thrown aside in apparent haste.

An overturned vase of flowers lay on the straw mat floor, next to a small table with two telephones, one black and one green.

The tent’s multi-colored, geometrically patterned roof drooped low in places, and at least two of the large wooden supports were broken in two, apparently by the force of the bomb that struck the nearby tennis court.

Further down the road, Kadafi’s official office complex was also badly damaged by the blast of a bomb that scored a direct hit on what appeared to have been a bunker attached to the complex.

Reporters counted eight craters--six that appeared to have been made by large bombs and two by rockets--clustered in the sector of the sprawling barracks where Kadafi lived and worked. Shrapnel, broken glass and the bodies of dead birds littered the grounds.

An Information Ministry official told reporters that Libya shot down four more U.S. planes Wednesday. Libya claimed to have shot down 20 planes Tuesday morning and four others late Tuesday night. The official said the pilots shot down Wednesday had ejected and “changed into civilian clothes to make them look like Libyans.” He said Libyan search teams “were hunting for the Americans with dogs.”

Reports of Fighting

In Washington, Administration officials said they were monitoring the reports of gun battles in and around Kadafi’s headquarters to see whether a military coup d’etat was being attempted, but they said they had no conclusive indication of one.

“The situation is very fluid,” said one senior official with access to U.S. intelligence reports. “We don’t know who is doing the shooting--whether it’s a small faction or something more widespread.”

Another official said the reports were consistent in describing the clashes as being between the militia and the regular army. But he added, “We don’t know if it is being centrally led or coordinated.”

“Even if this isn’t it (a coup attempt), the fact that a fissure could open in the military this quickly is very encouraging,” he said. “We are trying to ascertain whether Kadafi is in Tripoli--there are reports that he is out in the country in one of his refuges. We don’t even know for sure that he was in the compound during the attack, although we assume that he was.”

It could not be immediately determined whether Kadafi’s TV appearance was live or taped or whether it took place in Tripoli.

Reagan Administration officials have said they would be delighted if U.S. pressure against Libya could touch off a revolt against Kadafi by dissident military officers, but they have also acknowledged that they have few if any direct contacts within the officers’ corps.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this article from Washington.

Other stories and pictures are on Pages 16, 17, 18, 22 and 23.