TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said he did not fear death and defiantly vowed to fight "to the beyond", as NATO insisted there would be no halt to in its air war despite Italian calls for a cessation.

"We will resist and the battle will continue to the beyond, until you're wiped out. But we will not be finished," Gadhafi said in an audio message broadcast on Libyan television late on Wednesday.

"There's no longer any agreement after you killed our children and our grandchildren... You (the West) can move back," he said in homage to his colleague Khuwildi Hemidi, several members of whose family were killed on Monday in NATO raids on his residence.

"We are not frightened. We are not trying to live or escape," Gadhafi said, denouncing what he called a crusade against a Muslim country targeting civilians and children.

NATO has acknowledged its warplanes early on Monday hit Sorman west of Tripoli but insisted the target was military, a precision air strike against a "high-level" command and control node.

Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said 15 people, including three children, were killed in the attack, which he slammed as a "cowardly terrorist act which cannot be justified".

Ibrahim said the attack was on an estate belonging to Hemidi, a veteran colleague of Gadhafi.

"By what right do you target politicians and their families?" Gadhafi asked in the message. He said that Hemidi's office in Tripoli had been bombed four times.

"They were looking for him because he's a hero. When they didn't find him in his office they wanted to kill him in his home," Gadhafi added, calling on the United Nations to send observers to confirm that the NATO target was a civilian site and not a military target.

Gadhafi promised to build a monument to 4-year-old Khaleda, Hemidi's grand-daughter, who the authorities said was killed in the raid.

"We will stay, we will resist and we will not give in. Strike with your missiles, two, three, 10 or 100 years," Gadhafi said.

Agence France-Presse