Kadafi’s Wife Says She’d ‘Like to Kill’ U.S. Pilot

Col. Moammar Kadafi’s wife said Monday that if she could find the American pilot who bombed her house, killing her infant daughter and injuring her sons, she would “kill him myself.”

“You should tell Reagan’s wife what has happened here,” an angry Safia Kadafi said at a news briefing in Kadafi’s Aziziya Barracks compound one week after U.S. warplanes bombed Libya. “Now you have to change your mind who is the terrorist--Moammar Kadafi or Reagan.”

Safia Kadafi, wearing a long red silk dress covered with a full-length black velvet cape studded with rhinestones around the edges, sat on a stool and leaned on one crutch as she spoke to about 50 foreign journalists at the compound on the outskirts of Tripoli.

She had appeared to be limping slightly when she arrived, but she had not previously been reported wounded and did not say how she was hurt. Two of her seven children, ages 14 and 11, stood behind her.

“From now on until I die, I consider America my own enemy unless they give Reagan the death sentence,” she said.

She added that “if I got the pilot (of the plane that bombed her home), I should like to kill him myself.”

She spoke in Arabic, and her remarks were translated into English by a government interpreter. She did not answer reporters’ questions, which officials refused to translate for her.

Libyan officials say about 40 people were killed in the raid, but diplomats say as many as 100 are believed to have died. Among the dead was a 15-month-old girl named Hana, identified by officials and a doctor as Kadafi’s adopted daughter.

Kadafi’s two youngest sons, Seph, 4, and Kamis, 3, also were reported wounded.

About 100 yards away were the ruins of the Kadafi house, a two-story modern structure severely damaged in the April 15 U.S. bombing raid, launched in retaliation for what the Reagan Administration said was Libyan-supported terrorism. Three bombs struck in front of the house as the family slept.

“Moammar is not a terrorist,” Safia Kadafi said. “Reagan and (British Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher are terrorists. Moammar is a human being. He has adopted children without parents.”

She said she could not believe that the Americans would bomb her home.

“All of my friends and my relatives contacted me and asked me to leave this house because they thought the Americans would bomb it. But I said no. . . . I did not believe they would do this.”