NATO air strikes hit the compound in Tripoli where Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi resides, killing six people and wounding 10 others, a government official said as the ICC stated it will probably issue a warrant for Gaddafi's arrest by the end of the month.
Explosions thundered across the capital and wailing ambulances raced through the city as the last missile exploded.
It was the second NATO air attack on Tripoli in 48 hours - several command centres were hit early Tuesday as part of the alliance's effort to weaken the regime's resistance to a three-month-old rebellion.
Government officials and state-run Libyan television said the strikes targeted Bab al-Azaziya, Gaddafi's compound. They did not say which of the compound's buildings were targeted.
At the nearby Khadra Hospital, medics wheeled in the bodies of two men they said were killed in the shelling. One of bodies was charred; the other was covered by a green blanket, a leg dangling from the stretcher.
From a bus ferrying reporters to the hospital, smoke could be seen rising from part of the Gaddafi compound. Skid marks left from screeching vehicles crisscrossed the roads around it.
The medics said others had been killed by the airstrikes and were still being retrieved from the compound.
'ICC COUDLD ISSUE GADDAFI WARRANT'
The International Criminal Court is likely to issue an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi by the end of the month, ANSA news agency quoted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini as saying Thursday.
"At the end of the month, when in all probability the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will issue arrest warrants against Colonel Gaddafi and certain members of his regime, perhaps members of his family," the minister said about the likely end date for Italy's military mission in that country.
Frattini was speaking in Cagliari, Sardinia, during the campaign for local elections to be held on Sunday and Monday.
Italy joined NATO-led air strikes in Libya at the end of April.
The ICC stressed that its prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, had to ask the court's judges to issue any warrants.
"For judges to issue a warrant of arrest the prosecutor needs to have made a request, which he has not made yet," said spokeswoman Florence Olara.
Frattini said Gaddafi had only until the end of the month to make his exit, by going into exile for example, because an arrest warrant would change his position.
"It is clear that after the issuing of an arrest warrant, the international community will have a legal obligation ... to pursue Gaddafi, like we did with (Yugoslav ex-president Slobodan) Milosevic and (Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko) Mladic" who were both hauled before a UN court, he said.
Moreno-Ocampo said last week that Gaddafi's regime was murdering and persecuting civilians, and that he would seek arrest warrants for three people he did not name.
"Widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population have been and continue to be committed in Libya, including murder and persecution, as crimes against humanity," he said.
Saying he had witnesses, videos and photos to back his case, the prosecutor promised to request "arrest warrants against three individuals who appear to bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity" in Libya.
Diplomats have said Gaddafi is likely to be on the first list of warrants.
The ICC prosecutor said he was also investigating the deaths of dozens of sub-Saharan Africans in the rebel bastion of Benghazi by an "angry mob" who believed they were mercenaries in Gaddafi's pay.
Rebels have been fighting Gaddafi loyalists since the regime violently put down pro-reform protests in mid-February.
NATO-led air strikes on Thursday hit Muammar Gaddafi's compound, killing three people, the Libyan regime said, as rebels celebrated the capture of Misrata airport and fresh diplomatic coups in the West.
