Zlitan: A Libyan rebel spokesman has claimed that a NATO airstrike on the western city of Zlitan has killed Khamis Gaddafi, one of the sons of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Mohammed Zawawi, a spokesman for the rebels, said on Friday that Khamis was among 32 people killed in the strike.
"Overnight there was an aircraft attack by NATO on the Gaddafi operations room in Zlitan and there are around 32 Gaddafi troops killed. One of them is Khamis," said Zawawi, a spokesman for the United Revolutionary Forces.
A NATO official at operations headquarters in Naples, Italy, told the Reuters news agency that while he was aware of the report, he could not confirm it.
"We cannot confirm anything right now, because we don't have people on the ground, but we are trying to find out what we can," he said.
"NATO struck an ammunition storage at around 8:15pm [1815 GMT] in Zlitan and a military police facility within a combat area at around 10:45pm [2045GMT] in the area of Zliten yesterday," a NATO official told the AFP news agency, adding that it did not know if Khamis had been killed in those airstrikes.
According to NATO's regular operational media update, the alliance flew 117 sorties on Thursday, of which 44 were flown as "strike sorties", indicating that munitions were carried.
The targets hit included an "ammunition storage facility", a "military facility", two multiple rocket launchers and one surface-to-air missile system in Zlitan, the statement says.
It also said that it hit two "military facilities" in Tripoli, in addition to 11 other targets in various areas.
The Reuters news agency reported a Libyan government spokesman as denying the death of Khamis, terming the report a "dirty trick".
"It's false news. They invented the news about Mr Khamis Gaddafi in Zlitan to cover up their killing," Moussa Ibrahim told Reuters in Tripoli.
"This is a dirty trick to cover up their crime in Zlitan and the killing of the al-Marabit family," he said, referring to a family the Libyan government says was killed by a NATO airstrike on Thursday.
