French warplanes have destroyed five Libyan military planes and two helicopters at Misrata air base in Libya.
A French armed forces spokesman said that all seven aircraft were on the ground when destroyed and were preparing to carry out attacks in the area.
A patrol of French Rafale fighters, backed by an E2-C Hawkeye AWACS, carried out air strikes overnight and around 20 French planes supported by four tankers and an E3F AWACS struck targets during the day.
The strikes, part of the United Nations mandated campaign by a Western coalition to halt Muammar Gaddafi's offensive on rebels trying to end his 41-year rule, were in the Misrata and Zintan area.
Backed by coalition air strikes, rebels retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah today after an all-night battle that suggested the tide was turning against Gaddafi's forces in the east.
Pro-Gaddafi forces had earlier pounded the town with tank, mortar and artillery fire that halted only as coalition aircraft appeared overhead, a rebel told Reuters.
The five planes destroyed at Misrata were Galeb fighter jets and the helicopters were MI-35's, the French armed forces said.
Meanwhile, the Libyan government has called for an extraordinary session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what it describes as a direct attack on its forces by the coalition in the eastern town of Ajdabiyah.
Elsewhere, Western air strikes hit several sites on the outskirts of rebel-held Misrata from where pro-Gaddafi forces had been shelling the city, a rebel spokesman said.
The spokesman said allied planes made several raids and bombed an ammunition site inside the airbase to the south of the city.
He said the shelling of the city by Gaddafi’s troops had eased.
President Barack Obama told Americans that the military mission in Libya is clear, focused and limited, and that it has already saved ‘countless’ civilian lives.
He stressed again that no US ground forces would go into Libya.
US Pentagon officials have said that despite the air strikes and today's turnaround in Ajdabiya, forces loyal to Gaddafi remain a real threat to civilians.
Meanwhile, the African Union said it was planning to facilitate talks to help end the war, but NATO said its operation could last three months, and France said the conflict would not end soon.
In Tripoli, explosions were heard early today, signalling possible new strikes by warplanes or missiles.
Libyan woman's plea to International media
Earlier, a Libyan woman made a desperate plea for help, slipping into a Tripoli hotel full of foreign media to accuse pro-government militiamen of gang-raping her and covering her in bruises and scars.
'Look at what Gaddafi's militias did to me,' Eman al-Obaidi screamed with tears in her eyes, pulling up her coat to show blood on her upper leg.
After being intimidated by security men and hotel staff, who also beat journalists trying to interview her in the restaurant of the hotel, she was bundled into a car and driven away.
Obaidi said she had been arrested at a checkpoint in Tripoli because she was from the city of Benghazi, bastion of the insurgency against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's rule.
Eman al-Obaidi, who appeared to be in her 30s and was wearing a loose black coat, slippers and a scarf, said she had been raped by 15 men and held for two days.
Her face was badly bruised.
She continued, 'they swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up,' she said, weeping and stretching out her arms to show the scars.
Her story could not be independently verified. It was unclear whether she had escaped or had been released.
The government said it was treating her case as a criminal one.
In the ensuing scuffle, one member of the hotel staff grabbed a knife from a table and yelled: 'You traitor! How dare you say that?'
A man in civilian clothes took out a gun.
Several journalists tried to protect Obaidi, but a foreign journalist who was trying to get away from the scene with a camera on which he had recorded the scuffle was thrown to the ground and kicked.
Obaidi was eventually forced into a garden outside the hotel. Journalists trying to get to her were pushed away.
International human rights groups say Gaddafi loyalists have been arresting thousands of people. Libyan officials say they only arrest people linked to armed gangs or al Qaeda militants.
But as Western powers press on with air raids which they say are designed to protect civilians against Gaddafi's forces, people in the capital have become more outspoken in their criticism of the state.
Foreign journalists in Tripoli are unable to report freely and not allowed to leave the hotel without government escorts.
