By Maria Golovnina and Michael Georgy
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Western air strikes pounded Muammar Gaddafi's defences and allied warplanes patrolled Libyan skies on Sunday, lifting the siege of Benghazi and allowing rebels to surge forward and retake lost ground.
The aerial assault stopped in its tracks the advance by Gaddafi's troops into Benghazi and left the burnt and shattered remains of his tanks and troop carriers littering the main road outside the rebel stronghold. The charred bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert.
"Gaddafi is like a chicken and the coalition is plucking his feathers so he can't fly. The revolutionaries will slit his neck," said Fathi Bin Saud, a 52-year-old rebel carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, surveying the wreckage.
Gaddafi said the raids amounted to terrorism and vowed to fight to the death. "We will not leave our land and we will liberate it," he said on state television. "We will remain alive and you will all die."
A Libyan government health official said the death toll from the Western air strikes had risen to 64 on Sunday after some of the wounded died. But it was impossible to independently verify the reports as government minders refused to take Western reporters in the capital Tripoli to the site of the bombings.
"Operations yesterday went very well," the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told NBC. "He (Gaddafi) hasn't had aircraft ... flying the last couple days. So effectively that no-fly zone has been put in place."
"ODYSSEY DAWN"
French planes fired the first shots on Saturday, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles near Benghazi in a United Nations-endorsed intervention to force Gaddafi's troops to cease fire and end attacks on civilians who launched an uprising last month against his 41-year rule.
France sent an aircraft carrier towards Libya and its planes were over the country again on Sunday, defence officials said. Britain said its planes had targeted Libya's air defences mainly around the capital Tripoli.
On the main road south from Benghazi, some 14 government tanks, 20 troop carriers, two trucks with multiple rocket launchers and dozens of pick-ups were all destroyed. Some still smouldered. Fourteen bodies lay next to the vehicles, though the scale of the bombardment made identifying bodies difficult as tyres burnt and munitions exploded in the flames.
U.S. and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles overnight against air defences around the capital Tripoli and the western city of Misrata, which has been besieged by Gaddafi's forces, U.S. military officials said.
They said U.S. forces and planes were working with Britain, France, Canada and Italy in operation "Odyssey Dawn." Denmark said it had four fighter planes ready to join in on Sunday and was awaiting U.S. instructions.
It was the biggest Western military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq began exactly eight years ago.
Gaddafi said all Libyans had now been armed to defend the country and Western defeat was inevitable. Libya's state news agency said more than a million men and women would be armed.
China and Russia, which abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote last week endorsing intervention, expressed regret at the military action. China's Foreign Ministry said it hoped the conflict would not lead to a greater loss of civilian life.
Explosions and heavy anti-aircraft fire rattled Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday. Defiant cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) echoed around the city centre.
Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the "colonial enemy." Ten bodies were wrapped up in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said.
The mood in Tripoli turned markedly anti-Western, and crowds shouted defiant slogans and shot in the air.
SNIPERS
Tripoli residents said they had heard an explosion near the eastern Tajoura district, while in Misrata they said strikes had targeted an airbase used by Gaddafi's forces. Gaddafi's troops were still surrounding Misrata on Sunday, a resident said, and government snipers were posted on rooftops in the city centre.
"They seem to be ready to fire at anything that moves," the resident, named Mohammed, told Reuters.
The Western intervention, after weeks of diplomatic wrangling, was welcomed in Benghazi with a mix of apprehension and relief.
"We think this will end Gaddafi's rule. Libyans will never forget France's stand with them. If it weren't for them, then Benghazi would have been overrun tonight," said Iyad Ali, 37.
"We salute France, Britain, the United States and the Arab countries for standing with Libya. But we think Gaddafi will take out his anger on civilians. So the West has to hit him hard," said civil servant Khalid al-Ghurfaly, 38.
Benghazi's main hospital was filled with men, women and children wounded in Saturday's assault on the city by Gaddafi's forces. There were 24 bodies, including eight government troops, visible in the morgue, and more were stored in refrigerators.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the allies had agreed to use "all necessary means, especially military" to enforce the Security Council resolution for an end to attacks on civilians.
Some analysts have questioned the strategy for the military intervention, fearing Western forces might be sucked into a long civil war despite a U.S. insistence, repeated on Saturday, that it has no plans to send ground troops into Libya.
(Reporting by Mohammed Abbas and Angus MacSwan in Benghazi, Maria Golovnina and Michael Georgy in Tripoli, Hamid Ould Ahmed and Christian Lowe in Algiers; Tom Perry in Cairo, John Irish and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Missy Ryan in Washington, Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
