Kadafi Says He Was With Family When Jets Attacked

The London newspaper Sunday Today quoted Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi as saying that he was asleep in his house when U.S. warplanes bombed it and that he tried to help his children escape.

Kadafi also is quoted as saying he deplores terrorism “clearly and definitely” and that President Reagan “wants to finish the world.”

Libyan officials reported that Kadafi’s adopted 15-month-old daughter was killed and two young sons were wounded in the April 15 raid on Tripoli and Benghazi.

At the time of the raid, Libyan officials said that Kadafi was not in his house in the Aziziya Barracks near Tripoli during the pre-dawn raids. Some reports said he was in his tent in the grounds of the compound.

But in the interview he was quoted as saying he was asleep in the house.

“I started to save the children. It was difficult, groping my way between the bombs and the ashes,” he said.

“It was particularly difficult that night because my wife had a slipped disc and she was strapped to the bed,” Kadafi was quoted as saying. “The attack was carried out . . . , especially for the house and my tent. You can take a look yourself.”

The hourlong interview took place Saturday in an office in the heavily damaged barracks. The newspaper said Kadafi spoke in Arabic and his remarks were translated by his foreign secretary, Kamal Hassan Makour.

Kadafi was quoted as saying: “There was no reason whatsoever, no direct conflict between the U.S. and Libya, no rationale, no reason for the U.S. to have done what it did.”

Reagan has said he ordered the attack in reprisal for the April 5 terrorist attack, blamed on Libya, that killed two people and injured more than 200 at a West Berlin nightclub popular with Americans.

Kadafi described Reagan as “a capitalist and a fanatic” and “a failed actor who became the President of a great power and he wants to show he can move fleets, big war machines.”