UN approves no-fly zone over Libya

By Ken Dilanian

March 17, 2011 12 AM PT

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON D.C. —

The U.N. Security Council has voted to authorize a no-fly zone and other military action against the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

The vote was 10 to 0, with five abstentions. The five were China, Russia, Brazil, India and Germany.

Military officials in the U.S., France and Britain had already been planning airstrikes designed to protect civilians and stop the momentum of Kadafi’s forces.

“Each day, each hour, increases the weight on our shoulders,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told the council. “We must not wait.”

In Tobruk, Libya, Al Jazeera television broadcast images of fireworks going off in response to the vote.

More to Read

World & Nation

Ken Dilanian

Ken Dilanian was a reporter in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau from April 2010 until May 2014. Before that, he had spent three years at USA Today, where he covered foreign policy and Congress. He worked for a decade at the Philadelphia Inquirer, three of them as a Rome-based foreign correspondent making frequent trips to Iraq. A series he co-wrote on deaths in Philadelphia’s child welfare system won the 2007 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. A Massachusetts native, he is a 1991 graduate of Williams College.

UN approves no-fly zone over Libya

More to Read

More From the Los Angeles Times