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“The burden of the strike sorties fell on the shoulders of predominately the Canadians, the British and the French,” said the NATO official. “I must say that, Canada in particular, being the smaller of the three air forces, once again punched well above its weight.”

NATO was keeping up its campaign on Thursday — bombing Sirte, Col. Gaddafi’s birthplace. Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage over pockets of Tripoli and rebel leaders, who are believed to be in control of much of the capital, said the war would be over only when the now fugitive Libyan leader was found, “dead or alive.”

Support for the operation among Canadians has been mixed, amid accusations of mission creep and controversy about civilian casualties; it seems clear, however, that for better or worse this country has well exceeded the peripheral role that many observers expected it to play.

The six CF-18s — backed up by one spare — have logged 733 bombing sorties above the North African nation, while the Canadian refuelling and reconnaissance aircraft have added hundreds more flights.

“The folks that are flying are flying hard and they’re flying a high tempo of operations,” said Brigadier-General Derek Joyce, commander of Task Force Libeccio, as the Italy-based Canadian team is called. “I’m very, very proud of what they’ve accomplished.”

It is difficult to get a precise picture of who is contributing what to the campaign, said Prof. Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, a British defence think-tank.