The same day NATO launched the most intense bombardment of Tripoli since its air campaign began in March, a senior diplomat has made the United States' strongest overture yet to the rebels battling forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said he had delivered an invitation on President Barack Obama's behalf, inviting the Libyan rebels' National Transitional Council to set up an office in Washington, DC.
While he called the rebel group "legitimate and representative and credible," he stopped short of offering them formal recognition, however.
"We are not talking to Gadhafi and his people. They are not talking to us. They have lost legitimacy," Feltman told reporters during a visit to the de-facto rebel capital of Benghazi on Tuesday.
The invitation comes the same day Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh announced that his country now recognizes the National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
Although the rebel group welcomes any measure of international political legitimacy, spokesperson Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said that they really need more concrete assistance.
"It is just not enough to recognize (us) and visit the liberated areas," Ghoga told The Associated Press. "We have tried very hard to explain to them that we need the arms, we need funding, to be able to bring this to a successful conclusion at the earliest possible time and with the fewest humanitarian costs possible."
His comments came hours after a series of NATO warplanes pounded targets near Moammar Gadhafi's residential compound in Tripoli, unleashing more than 20 air strikes in the span of 30 minutes on Tuesday morning.
The attacks arrived in three waves as NATO warplanes roared in at low altitude over the Libyan capital, with each successive strike rattling the windows of structures many kilometres away.
Observers said the air strikes were the heaviest in Tripoli since NATO's military campaign began in Libya more than two months ago.
"We though it was the day of judgment," said Fathallah Salem, a 45-year-old contractor whose elderly mother needed hospital treatment for shock after witnessing the air strikes that shook the walls of his home.
The Western military alliance said that a vehicle storage facility adjacent to Bab al-Aziziya, the Tripoli neighbourhood where Gadhafi's compound is located, was among its targets.
NATO said regime forces had used supplies from the facility to conduct attacks on civilians in Libya.
Libyan government spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim said the latest NATO attacks claimed three lives and wounded dozens of others.
Journalists who travelled to Tripoli Central Hospital later saw the bodies of three young men whom medical staff claimed were victims of the Tuesday air strikes.
Ibrahim said the NATO warplanes had struck buildings used by volunteer units of the Libyan army.
The intense level of bombing levelled at the Bab al-Aziziya targets on Tuesday is the latest sign that NATO is increasingly focused on neutralizing the Gadhafi regime
