Global General

NATO denies bombing Libya's largest oil field

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-04-07 22:43

BRUSSELS- NATO on Thursday denied Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's accusation it bombed the country's largest oil field.

Related readings: Libya contact group to meet in Doha on April 13  Banks see 'controllable risk' in letters of guarantee in Libya  CIA secretly at work inside Libya

"The accusation by Colonel Gaddafi that NATO was responsible for fires in the Sarir Oil Fields is false and is a direct result of his attacks on his own people and infrastructure," Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, commander of the NATO mission, said in a statement posted on NATO's website.

Bouchard said NATO had never carried out strike operations in the oil field because Gaddafi's forces "were not threatening civilian population centres from there."

"The only one responsible for this fire is the Gadhaffi regime and we know he wants to disrupt oil getting to Tobruk," he said.

Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim on Wednesday blamed Britain for attacks on the Sarir oil field, which killed three guards and a number of oil workers.