Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, the commander of NATO operations, says that NATO "had no idea that Gaddafi was on board" the convoy that was hit by airstrikes as it fled Sirte.
"We saw a convoy and we had no idea that Gaddafi was on board. In fact, I was surprised that Gadhafi was in the Sirte area," the Canadian military officer said on Monday during a video conference from his headquarters in Naples, Italy.
He said that NATO air surveillance had detected 175 vehicles assembling in Sirte on Thursday morning, and that the alliance believed that they would be used to allow Gaddafi loyalists to flee the city as it fell to NTC forces.
"The vehicles started to make their way out, and one of the outcomes of this was the concern [that forces] from Sirte would join with the remnants of forces from Bani Walid and move into another desert area," Bouchard said.
"We went on from there to first of all attempt up to break up the convoy, to break it into manageable chunks and to slow it down (and) that's what we did.''
"We brought to bear our weapons systems on the convoy twice, and we achieved the aim of stopping the convoy," Bouchard said, adding that the presence of rockets and machine guns in some vehicles made them a legitimate target.