Moamer Kadhafi's forces attacked Libya's third-largest city Misrata on Wednesday drawing no response from NATO despite a pledge by the alliance to press its air war, a rebel spokesman said.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 Kadhafi troops attacked the Mediterranean port city from the south, west and east, killing 10 rebel fighters and wounding 26, the spokesman Hassan al-Galai, told AFP by telephone from the city.

Despite the deployment of tanks, Grad rocket launchers and heavy artillery, there had been no intervention by NATO led aircraft by 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) when the fighting was still raging, Galai said.

Misrata is the rebels' most significant enclave in western Libya.

On May 12, the rebels scored a major victory when they secured the airport, effectively ending a two-month siege of the city by pushing Kadhafi's forces beyond rocket range.

NATO allies meeting in Brussels pledged to stay in Libya "for as long as necessary" and commit the "necessary means" to the military campaign against Kadhafi's forces.

But the top US uniformed commander Admiral Michael Mullen conceded the Libya campaign was making "very slow progress," while French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet played down expectations of a quick end to the war.

After NATO extended the operation for another 90 days through late September, alliance defence ministers issued a joint statement pledging their determination to continue the mission "for as long as necessary."

They said they were "committed to providing the necessary means and maximum operational flexibility within our mandate to sustain these efforts and welcome additional contributions to our common efforts."

But with only eight out of 28 NATO members carrying out air strikes, NATO's secretary general as well as the US and British defence chiefs prodded allies that have taken secondary roles to help ease the burden on air crews showing signs of fatigue.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates named three countries that should consider striking, Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands, and urged two countries that are not participating at all -- Germany and Poland -- to consider joining the campaign, said officials familiar with the discussions.

"We want to see increased urgency in some quarters in terms of Libya," British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said before the talks.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he had encouraged other allies "to broaden" their support of the mission to ensure the "sustainability" of the operation.

No country responded to Gates's request "but no one closed the door," a senior US official said.

The NATO defence ministers renewed their demand for the Libyan strongman to leave power.

"Time is working against Kadhafi, who has clearly lost all legitimacy and therefore needs to step down," the joint statement said.

The NATO meeting came hours after the Libyan leader said in an audio message broadcast by state television that he would fight to the death.

"Despite the bombings, we will never submit," Kadhafi said in the nine-minute message, which was broadcast on his 69th birthday Tuesday.

"We have only one choice -- (to stay in) our country to the end. Death, life, victory, no matter what," he said.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that investigators had evidence that Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi ordered mass rapes and bought containers of sex drugs for troops to attack women.

"Now we are getting some information that Kadhafi himself decided to rape and this is new," Moreno-Ocampo told reporters at the United Nations.

He said there were reports of hundreds of women attacked in some areas of Libya and evidence that the authorities had bought "Viagra-type" medicines and given them to troops as part of the official rape policy.

Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said it was US policy that Kadhafi "has to leave" but that it was difficult to put a timeframe to his departure.

"What I have seen is what I would call very slow progress -- more and more individuals from his regime who are defecting, some of whom who are from the military," he said on a visit to Egypt.

"It's the US position that Kadhafi has to leave and it is a challenge for anybody to put a timetable to that."

The French defence minister warned that NATO was facing "a system that can be unpredictable" which was why the campaign was "dragging on".

"I don't think it will accelerate," Longuet added.

Spain said it was recognising the rebel National Transitional Council as the "sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people."

"Spain will help the Libyan people; we want a democratic country with rights and freedoms," Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez said after talks with the rebel leaders in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi.

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