Libyan Military Sites Appear to Be Hardest Hit

Despite Libyan claims that mostly civilian sites were hit in last week’s U.S. air strike, reporters taken on several days of damage inspection tours have seen or heard evidence suggesting that the heaviest Libyan losses were military.

It is difficult for reporters to draw firm conclusions from what they were shown on field trips to apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and farms in Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, 400 miles east of the capital.

The tours, to a farm and a naval training school in Tripoli over the weekend and to five bomb-damaged sites in Benghazi on Monday, were carefully arranged and orchestrated by Libyan officials. Also, because access to most of the bombed sites was not permitted until nearly a week after the April 15 raid, signs of military damage may already have been removed from view.

It is clear that in several instances, the U.S. planes missed their apparent targets. The civilian sites that they hit instead included four multifamily homes that were destroyed in Tripoli and an elementary school lightly damaged in Benghazi.

Other damage to what was clearly civilian property included a chicken coop in Tripoli and two homes and the civilian side of Baninah air base in Benghazi.

Also, the residence in Tripoli’s Aziziya Barracks where Kadafi and his family lived was hit--apparently on purpose--injuring two of his sons and, according to Libyan officials, killing his 15-month-old adopted daughter.

The Libyans have so far produced far less evidence of heavy civilian damage than they have attributed to the air strike. In several instances, however, reporters saw what they believed to be telltale signs of damage to military facilities.

Libyans officials strenuously denied this, but a number of discrepancies and indiscreet comments reinforced the impression that what the reporters were seeing was in some cases not what the Libyans said they were showing.

In two of the five sites shown to reporters in Benghazi on Monday, it was not possible to determine if the damage was caused by U.S. bombs or, as the Reagan Administration has contended, by some of the scores of anti-aircraft missiles that the Libyans fired at the attacking planes.

Reporters were shown a three-story house near the airport where officials said a bomb had pierced two walls, struck a man and killed him but failed to explode. The bomb had already been removed, but it left two identically shaped, 2-by-5-foot slanted holes in an outer and inner wall.

Described as Bomb

Officials said the projectile was a U.S. bomb--one of more than a dozen that failed to explode and were removed to a field outside Benghazi, where they were later shown to reporters.

However, a boy of about 10 who lives in the building told an Arabic-speaking reporter that the damage was caused by a Libyan missile--one apparently aimed at the attacking planes that fell back on the Libyans.

“You mean American missile?” the reporter asked.

“No, Libyan,” the boy insisted before an official intervened and shooed him away.

More obvious discrepancies were noted at a rehabilitation center for the disabled about 12 miles from the airport. Although there were no casualties and damage was confined to a hole in the roof of one of the houses where hospital staff members live, one doctor said the bombing “terrified patients who were unable to move or help themselves.”

Hidden From View

Libyan officials insisted that the center was targeted by the jets, but several staff members at the center said the target was a military barracks about 100 yards away but hidden from view by a cement wall. The barracks are thought to be the Jamahiriya Barracks, which the Reagan Administration said was one of the targets.

Reporters who climbed a set of stairs to the roof of one building to get a better view saw a long hangar, the front half of which had been blasted away by what appeared to be a direct hit. They also saw the remains of a charred helicopter and what looked like a runway for small planes and helicopters.

Officials immediately ordered the reporters down from the roof and blocked access to the stairs.

“No, no, you cannot go there,” one excited official told the reporters. “That is closed. No damage there. Go away.”

28 Still Hospitalized

At the Jalla Hospital, where the casualties from the Benghazi strike were taken, officials said that 74 people had been injured, all of them civilians, and that 28 were still hospitalized.

However, a nurse, when asked about the wounded, said 22 of the hospitalized casualties were military. Reporters allowed into the wards where the injured lay counted three children and more than 20 young men. Asked in Arabic where he was from, one of the men replied “Baninah,” the name of the military and civilian airport. At that, an accompanying official quickly ushered the reporter from the room.

The school, where about 100 children staged an anti-American demonstration for the reporters, was grazed by what appeared to have been a missile. It damaged a corner of an upper floor. An unexploded 500-pound bomb, obviously dropped by one of the planes, also lay half-buried near one of the two school buildings.

Officials insisted that the school was also targeted by the jets. But about 50 yards behind it was what may have been the intended target--an identically shaped building with the blue and white flag of the Libyan navy flying from a flagpole in front. The building appeared undamaged, however.

At Baninah airport, where Pentagon sources said between five and 12 MIG-23 jet fighters were hit in the raids, reporters were shown several destroyed and damaged civilian aircraft, including a Boeing 727 and a Fokker 27, both clearly marked with the insignia and colors of Libya’s civil airline.

The Fokker was destroyed, its fuselage a mass of twisted rubble, while the 727 bore several large gashes below its cockpit and forward of one of the wings.

The charred remains of a helicopter lay on a dirt field next to the Fokker. Officials said another helicopter and a 14-seat Twin Otter plane were also destroyed, while a second Boeing 727 and another Fokker were slightly damaged.

“All of the aircraft were civilian,” said one official who declined to give his name. “This is a civilian airport. There are no military planes here.”

Asked what four MIG jet fighters, armed with missiles, were doing on the runway behind him, the official said they were “just flying by and stopped to refuel.”

The airport bore signs of having been attacked with cluster bombs, of which about a dozen that failed to explode were later shown to reporters at a demolition site outside the city. Also shown were two unexploded 500-pound bombs and a 10-foot-long bomb rack assembly, bearing the serial number UP096, that evidently fell off one of the planes.

Benghazi officials said 24 people were killed in the raid on the city, which raised the casualty total given by officials in both Benghazi and Tripoli to 46.

Near the damaged elementary school, along the road to the airport, reporters were also shown a single-story house that had been demolished by a direct hit.

“You know who died there? A 70-year-old woman died there,” said one neighbor, Abdul Kafi, 36.

“Across the street, in that house over there, a man and his 3-month-old daughter were killed,” he added bitterly. “When he heard the voice of the planes, he came running out with his daughter in his arms, and they were both killed.”

It was not clear from the evidence on hand at the site if the bombed house had been the plane’s intended target. But one neighbor, asked who the house belongs to, replied “Ashur.”

Ashur? he was asked again.

“Yes,” he said. “Col. Ashur.”