NATO has begun using attack helicopters to intensify its strikes against forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The alliance claims the helicopters give greater precision in hitting military targets. But the Libyan government claims the strikes are causing civilian casualties.
British Apache helicopters carried out their first strikes over Libya on Saturday, hitting military targets.
French attack helicopters have also been carrying out operations, giving the NATO campaign more muscle against pro-Gaddafi forces.
Apache pilot said, "We struck a military radar installation on the coast, which we destroyed with hellfire missiles and we also destroyed a vehicle at a military vehicle checkpoint."
Flying at much lower altitudes, the helicopters give NATO a key advantage in close-up combat.
Earlier NATO's attack jets primarily struck government targets, but sometimes they missed and hit rebels instead.
On Sunday, British jets hit a military barracks in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, further intensifying NATO pressure on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
But after the raid, Libyan government officials took a group of journalists to witness the remains of a building they say was damaged in the NATO bombing.
Damaged building owner’s son said, "From about 3 to 5:30 we heard a big noise in this place, this is my father's farm, they came to bomb us."
An AP cameraman said he witnessed a few dead animals at the site where a group of Gaddafi's supporters chanted slogans and waved posters.
"God, Mohammad, Libya and nothing else," the Gadhafi loyalists chanted.
But AP said it could verify the Libyan government's version of events at the farm.
With intensified attacks from the air and using helicopters to target government forces, NATO is providing a major boost to Libyan rebel forces who have seized much of the country's east and the west.
But Gaddafi's government says more than 7-hundred civilians have been killed and more than 4-thousand wounded by NATO air strikes.
And NATO said they are bombing only military targets to protect civilians.