By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels said Muammar Gaddafi's forces TARGET (TGT.NY)d food industry plants in renewed bombardment of Misrata on Saturday, a day after a Western rights group accused his loyalists of using cluster bombs in the besieged city.
A doctor in Misrata told Al Jazeera television that children were "the main victims of the cluster bombs."
"They appear as wounds all over the body, penetrations all over the body, eyes, head, and they rupture the surface tissue," Mohamed Al-Faqih, a doctor at Misrata medical centre, said.
Libya's government denies it is using such weapons.
An insurgent spokesman, Saadoun al Misrati, said three civilians and three rebels were killed in Saturday's clashes and a total of 48 wounded, in a third day of heavy shelling of the rebels' last major stronghold in the west of the country.
Another rebel spokesman, Gemal Salem, said about Gaddafi:
"He wants to starve the people it seems, his forces targeted the dairy factory and the factory that produces cooking oil, in addition to this his forces shelled three bakeries."
A third rebel said the dairy plant was damaged.
It was not immediately possible to independently verify the allegations.
Aid groups and residents have described an increasingly desperate situation for civilians in Misrata, with few areas safe from the fighting and a lack of food and medical supplies.
"Misrata is in total darkness," Al-Faqih, the doctor, said.
"There are no equipped medical facilities that are functioning properly," he said.
A Red Cross team arrived in the city on Saturday to assess the situation, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross and a Libyan government spokesman in Tripoli said.
Earlier this week, the Red Cross said it was opening an office in Tripoli at the invitation of the government and would send a team to Misrata to help civilians there.
A ship chartered by the independent humanitarian agency docked in Misrata a week ago, bringing medical supplies.
BOMBING "DAY AND NIGHT"
Government forces have laid siege to Misrata for about seven weeks. Hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed.
"The (government) forces are still firing mortars at residential areas. There are clashes in Tripoli Street," Salem, the rebel spokesman, said.
Tripoli Street is a main thoroughfare in the city of roughly 300,000 and frequent scene of fierce fighting in recent weeks.
Human Rights Watch said it had evidence Gaddafi's forces were firing cluster bombs into residential areas of Misrata. It published photographs of what it said were Spanish-produced cluster bombs, which release grenades designed to explode into fragments and kill the maximum number of people.
But Major General Saleh Abdullah Ibrahim told a news conference in Tripoli: "We do not have them (cluster bombs)."
"We are ready to receive any complaint as long as they are accompanied by evidence, so we can then investigate," he said.
Libyan officials say they are fighting armed militia with ties to al Qaeda bent on destroying the country, denying government troops are bombarding Misrata.
One rebel spokesman earlier said government forces fired at least 100 Grad rockets into the city on Saturday morning, targeting an industrial area. "We know that the dairy factory there has been damaged," Abdelbasset Abu Mzereiq said.
The fighting in Misrata is getting worse with shelling by government forces day and night, a resident who arrived in Tunisia on Saturday said.
Ibrahim Ali, 22, came on board a Medecins Sans Frontieres aid ship, accompanying a neighbour who was seriously wounded in a shelling attack. Sixty-four other wounded people from Misrata were also taken to safety on board the ship.
"They are bombing residential areas day and night. It's non-stop and they are using bigger weapons," he said in a hospital in the town of Sfax. "They bomb roads, houses."
Food was running short in some areas but people were trying to help each other out. Electricity was on and off. "Many shops are closed. At the bakeries there are long queues," he added.
(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla in Tripoli; Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Sfax; Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Stephanie Stephanie in Geneva; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
