FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who visited Tripoli two days ago and talked with Muammar Gaddafi, said NATO's intensive air strikes hit civilian facilities alongside military.
"Drones keep flying over the city and bombs are being dropped. I saw a ruined building as we were traveling to the Education Ministry headquarters. We stopped and an official accompanying us said in answer to my question that it was a hospital. Next to it stands the parliament building which NATO wanted to destroy, but the bombs hit the hospital. There are many facilities like that there. They planned to drop bombs on the TV tower and rubbed out half of a residential district," Ilyumzhinov said at a press conference at the Interfax main office on Tuesday.
Ilyumzhinov also said that he informed the presidential chief of staff, Sergei Naryshkin, in Moscow on June 9, that he was planning to go to Tunisia in the evening of the same day and then to Libya.
He remarked that he had been invited to Tripoli by the Libyan Chess Federation and Olympic Committee.
Overall, despite air strikes, Tripoli lives its routine life: markets, shops and restaurants are open, and traffic police officers clad in snow-white uniforms, are running the traffic, Ilyumzhinov said.
