MUAMMAR GADDAFI'S government was yesterday considering extending a deadline for rebels in Libya's third city, Misrata, to lay down their arms after the deputy foreign minister said scores had surrendered.

As military chiefs of Nato's 28 member states gathered for a two-day meeting in Brussels, French foreign minister Alain Juppe said the aim of the air campaign being led by the Western alliance was to weaken but not to kill the Libyan strongman by bombarding his strategic sites.

Deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim told reporters in Tripoli that around 400 fighters had turned in their arms in Misrata, the rebel's last major bastion in western Libya, which has been under loyalist siege for almost two months.

His comments could not be verified.

"I hope that the minister of justice will listen to our call to extend it at least for another day or two, because there are good signs among people there in Misrata," Kaim said.

He said the deadline to surrender in exchange for an amnesty expired at midnight on Tuesday, but it had already been rejected by the rebels fighting to oust Gaddafi after more than 40 years in power in the oil-rich north African nation.

AFP correspondents heard no fighting during the night but medics said that at least one person was killed and some 30 wounded in clashes around Misrata on Tuesday.

The death toll was sharply down on Monday when 14 people died. The fighting centred on the city's western and southwestern suburbs, close to the loyalist forces' base at the airport.

Rebel commanders said there had been several Nato air strikes on Gaddafi's armour on Tuesday.

Nato later said in a daily update that its warplanes targeted 16 key sites around Libya on Tuesday, including three tanks and three ammunition storage facilities in Misrata.

With the airport in government hands, the rebels are entirely dependent on supply by sea. The port has been repeatedly shelled by Gaddafi's forces and few vessels are docking, resulting in a worsening food shortage.

The expiry of the deadline came after a car bomb near the rebel headquarters in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi wounded two people.

The explosion happened about 200m (yards) from the insurgents' seafront headquarters.

"It was a car bomb," rebel military spokesperson Omar Ahmed Bani told AFP, while Libyan journalist Nasser Warfuli said at the scene that the vehicle was a white Chevrolet that blew up just before evening prayers.

"I was walking and everything exploded around me," Mohamed Tosi, one of the two men injured, said from his sick bed at Al-Jalaa Hospital, where the second injured man, was treated and discharged.

The blast sparked scenes of chaos as hundreds of men, many toting pistols or Kalashnikovs, milled around and climbed on top of the twisted metal of the car wreck to chant slogans against Gaddafi.