Mostly women and children, some said they were the families of soldiers in Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. They said they had come to protect Colonel Qaddafi’s compound from bombing by volunteering to be shields. “If they want to hit Muammar Qaddafi, they must hit us because we are all Muammar Qaddafi,” said Ghazad Muftah, a 52-year-old widow of a soldier from the Warfalla tribe, who said she was there with her six grown children.

In a press conference after the missile attacks, Mohamed Zweid, secretary of the Libyan version of a parliament, called the intervention “a barbaric and armed attack” and charged that it had “caused some real harm against civilians and buildings.”

“The claim that this aggression is for the protection of civilians is contradicted by what has really happened on the ground tonight,” he said. “The big number of civilians who have been hurt or harmed by this aggression tonight, the number is filling up our hospitals and ambulances are doing their best to save as many lives of civilians as possible.” But he declined to specify which civilian buildings or locations were hit.