Ai$ha Gadhafi

Ai$ha, pumped her right fist as she led the audience in late-night chants from the second-floor balcony of the badly damaged Bab Aziziyah compound, targeted by U.S. warplanes in 1986. "Leave our skies with your bombs," she said, referring to NATO airstrikes that had struck Tripoli just hours earlier. Hundreds rallied there late Thursday and early Friday, chanting pro-Gadhafi slogans, such as "Only Allah, Moammar and Libya," and "The people want Moammar as their leader." The crowd erupted in cheers when Ai$ha appeared on the balcony. "Let me go back to the past when I was a child, when I was nine years old, in this house," she said. "A rain of missiles and bombs. They tried to kill me. They killed dozens of children in Libya." "Now, after 25 years, the same missiles, the same bombs, rain on our children's heads," she said. "We are a people that cannot be defeated," she added. - KARIN LAUB