French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said today that NATO was not doing enough to protect civilians in Libya, the day after an African Union plan to halt the country's civil war collapsed.
Mr Juppe said NATO should target heavy weapons besieging Misrata.
An increasingly bloody siege by Muammar Gaddafi's troops in the rebel-held city in western Libya led rebels to dismiss the AU call for a ceasefire as meaningless.
'NATO must play its role fully. It wanted to take the lead in operations, we accepted that,' Mr Juppe told France Info radio ahead of travelling to Doha today for a Libya contact group meeting.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that NATO must intensify its efforts to protect civilians.
'We must maintain and intensify our efforts in NATO,' Mr Hague told reporters on arrival at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg today.
The Red Cross said it was opening a Tripoli office and would send a team to Misrata to help civilians trapped by fighting, but one of Gaddafi's ministers warned any aid operation involving foreign troops would be seen as a declaration of war.
Gaddafi's son Saif quickly dismissed the idea of his father stepping down.
'We want new blood, that's what we want for Libya's future. But to talk of (Gaddafi) leaving, that's truly ridiculous,' he told French news channel BFM TV.
Libyan television said the 'colonial and crusader aggressors' hit military and civilian sites in Al Jufrah district in central Libya yesterday.
Rebels in the coastal city of Misrata, under siege for six weeks, dismissed reports that Gaddafi had accepted a ceasefire, saying they were fighting house-to-house battles with his forces, who fired rockets into the city.
Western leaders also rejected any deal that did not include Gaddafi's removal, and NATO refused to suspend its bombing of his forces unless there was a credible ceasefire.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a Brussels news briefing that Gaddafi's government had announced ceasefires in the past, but 'they did not keep their promises'.
Rebels told Reuters that Gaddafi's forces had intensified the assault, for the first time firing truck-mounted, Russian-made Grad rockets into the city, where conditions for civilians are said to be desperate.
Human Rights Watch accused Gaddafi's forces of indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Misrata which violated international law. It said about 250 people had died.
At the front outside the eastern rebel-held town of Ajdabiyah, rebels buried the charred bodies of Gaddafi troops killed in air strikes and said they were advancing westwards.
Pro-Gaddafi forces are reported to have fired rockets towards the town of Zintan yesterday.
NATO airstrikes hit weapons depots belonging to pro-Gaddafi forces near Zintan.
Libyan rebels took up position 40km west of the strategic town of Ajdabiyah today after clashes with Gaddafi's forces that left at least three dead according to rebels.
