The damage done in the capital followed a day of heavy violence in the besieged third city of Misrata.

AFP journalists said the Tripoli explosions came at 2210 GMT Sunday in several districts of the capital, which has been the target since Friday of intensive NATO raids.

A Libyan official accompanying journalists at the scene of Kadhafi's office said 45 people were wounded, 15 seriously, in that bombing. He added that he did not know whether there were victims under the rubble.

"It was an attempt to assassinate Colonel Kadhafi," he affirmed.

A meeting room facing Kadhafi's office was badly damaged by the blast.

NATO warplanes had already late Friday targeted the Bab Al-Aziziya district, where the presidential compound is located.

On Sunday, Grad rockets exploded in Misrata, where at least 12 were reported killed and 60 wounded in fresh fighting, despite a vow by the Libyan regime to halt its fire in the western port city where the humanitarian situation has stirred international concern.

Two captured pro-Kadhafi soldiers told AFP that loyalist forces were losing their grip in the battle for Misrata.

"Many soldiers want to surrender but they are afraid of being executed" by the rebels, said Lili Mohammed, a Mauritanian hired by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's regime to fight insurgents in the country's third city.

Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said the army had suspended operations against rebels in Misrata, but not left the city, to enable local tribes to settle the battle "peacefully and not militarily."

But Colonel Omar Bani, military spokesman of the rebels' Transitional National Council (TNC), said Kadhafi was "playing a really dirty game" aimed at dividing his opponents.

"It is a trick, they didn't go," Bani said in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi. "They have stayed a bit out of Tripoli Street but they are preparing themselves to attack again."

Libyan authorities want the conflict to look like a civil war between rival tribes, he argued.

"Most of the tribes around the Misrata area are inter-related so they won't fall for that trap," said Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, another TNC spokesman.

Bursts of automatic weapons fire could be heard and Grad rockets exploded in the city, the scene of deadly urban guerrilla fighting for several weeks between rebels and Kadhafi loyalists.

The city suffered its heaviest toll in 65 days of fighting on Saturday, with 28 dead and 100 wounded compared to a daily average of 11 killed, according to an Doctor Khalid Abu Falra at Misrata's "overwhelmed" main private clinic.

In western Libya, Kadhafi's forces bombed areas close to the rebel-held Dehiba border post with Tunisia in a bid to recapture the nearby town of Wazzan, witnesses said.

NATO warplanes staged raids on civil and military sites in Tripoli and other cities, state news agency JANA said, without giving casualty numbers. An explosion rocked the east of the capital, according to witnesses.

US Senator John McCain, fresh from a visit to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, urged more US air strikes on Libya, warning a prolonged stalemate would probably draw Al-Qaeda into the conflict.

"Nothing would bring Al-Qaeda in more rapidly and more dangerously than a stalemate," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Kadhafi's regime is accusing the United States, which launched its first Predator drone strikes over the weekend, of "new crimes against humanity" for deploying the low-flying, unmanned aircraft.

Drone strikes have so far targeted a rocket launcher targeting Misrata and an SA-8 surface-to-air missile in Tripoli, according to NATO officials.

With the fighting that has drawn in Western powers in its second month, Pope Benedict XVI called for "diplomacy and dialogue" in Libya during his traditional Easter Sunday message.

Meanwhile, cabin crew overpowered Kazakh man on an Alitalia flight from Paris to Rome after he pulled out a small knife or nail file, threatened an air hostess and demanded that the flight be diverted to Tripoli. His motives remained unclear and all passengers were safe.

ANSA news agency identified the man as Valeriy Tolmashev and informed sources were quoted as saying he was an adviser to Kazakhstan's delegation at UNESCO, the UN educational, scientific and cultural organization, in Paris.

A French journalist, 24, shot in the neck in Misrata was in intensive care after undergoing surgery, medics said. Friends refused to identify the journalist, a blogger who worked for "alternative media."

At the western gate into Ajdabiya, a lull in the fighting has given families some respite in their search for loved ones who have gone missing in and around the strategic crossroads city.

"As things calm down, people are building up the courage to come out and report," said Najim Miftah, a volunteer who has a binder of missing people that has doubled in two days with more than 70 new records.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, meanwhile, said it would press on with air strikes on Libya and urged civilians to shun areas around regime military installations and arsenals.

An aid ship delivered 160 tonnes of food and medicine to Misrata on Saturday and evacuated around 1,000 stranded migrant workers and wounded civilians to Benghazi on its return.

The fourth such rotation brought to 4,100 the number of people of 21 different nationalities evacuated by the International Organisation for Migration from Misrata since the launch of a humanitarian programme on 14 April, the organisation said.

Tunisian officials, meanwhile, said a Qatari vessel has evacuated 90 wounded people to Tunisia, including children, women and elderly people.

The UN refugee agency says about 15,000 people have fled fighting in western Libya into Tunisia in the past two weeks and a much larger exodus was feared. Over 570,000 people are also believed to have fled Libya since February 15.

Kuwait gave 50 million dinars ($180 million) to the TNC, its chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said.

And in another diplomatic success for the rebels, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he would soon visit Benghazi to open a consulate.

Massive protests in February -- inspired by the revolts that toppled long-time autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia -- escalated into war when Kadhafi's troops fired on demonstrators and protesters seized several eastern towns.

The battle lines have been more or less static in recent weeks, however, as NATO air strikes have helped block Kadhafi's eastward advance but failed to give the poorly organised and outgunned rebels a decisive victory.

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