the coalition has nine other members and nato may take the lead, though that is a delicate issue and far from resolved. in the meantime, libyan fighters have not gone away. we ve heard from misrata, east of tripoli, that gadhafi s tanks and snipers have unleashed, quote, absolute destruction and carnage. a spokesman says they re shooting people in the street. a poll shows support for the mission x,. 70% do not favor sending in ground troops. i want to turn to cnn s nic robertson, who is in the libyan capital and who saw the bombed-out compound for himself. nic, tell us about that and tell us what you re hearing there at this hour. reporter: well, it s been relatively quiet throughout the day here. in fact, different from yesterday. we haven t heard any of the sort of heavy anti-aircraft gun
of the cruise missiles. how accurate are these? i think we saw last night, how accurate they are, a building in the middle of the compound for gadhafi, two tomahawk missiles came through the roof. it wasn t a targeting of the compound but a specific building within the compound. both missiles came through the top. if i were a gadhafi command and control person somewhere across the country and i saw that this happened, i wouldn t sleep in a building at all tonight. i think it was a message. it s a message that the missiles are accurate. what about civilian casualties? the u.s. and coalition forces are doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, they say. are these happening because the weapons are so targeted? i think so. there are two things so talk about. civilian casualties, we should first talk about there were no pilot casualties at the same time. you know, last time when we went through this, it was a one
tons of water on the reactor. the head of the international atomic energy agency in switzerland warns the crisis remains very serious, but pressure in reactor number 3 is down. that bit of encouragement echoed by an official at the nuclear regulatory commission who told the new york times that the situation in the plant appears to be on the verge of stabilizing. also today, rescuers continue to dig through the rubble in search of survivors and bodies from the march 11th quake and tsunami. officials now say the disaster killed 8,805 people and more than 12,000 still remain missing. in libya, part of moammar gadhafi s compound is a pile of rubble today. u.s. and coalition forces bombed the site late yesterday. officials say the compound was hit, because it contained command and control facilities for gadhafi s forces. a top military officer said as a pentagon briefing today that gadhafi is not being targeted. western officials say there is no idea where the libyan leader may ev
given the fact that the united states has the capabilities to lead in this kind of an operation, even if technically someone else is seen as the leadership, it will still be largely a u.s.-led operation. think of those 128 tomahawk cruise missiles that began the operation, let s say. of those, all but two were u.s., maybe two were british. 126 were u.s., two were british. those are the rough numbers. it gives you an appreciation of who s really taking the lead in this kientd of an operation. now, let s be precise. british war planes, french war planes, they are involved. but u.s. f-15s and f-16s, jump jets, marine corps piloted, they re much more involved in this operation. it ses a significant international coalition, but when all is said and done, it s a u.s.-led coalition. wolf bliter, stay right there. we want to continue this conversation. we are waiting for president obama to speak from chile so we are going to take a quick break.
as i said, our initial focus is taking outs libyan air defenses so that a no-fly zone can operate effectively and aircraft and pilots of the coalition are not threatened when they re maintaining the no-fly zone. the second aspect of this is making sure that the humanitarian aspects of the mission can be met. but let me emphasize that we anticipate this transition to take place in a matter of days and not a matter of weeks. and so i would expect that over the next several days we ll have more information and the pentagon will be fully briefing the american people as well as the press on that issue. nato will be involved in a coordinating function because of