 On 13 March, Ali Atiyya, a colonel of the Libyan People's Air Force at the Mitiga military airport, near Tripoli, announced that he had defected and joined the revolution, and this is the earliest case of Libyan air force personnel defecting to the opposition.Very quickly defections have started to have effect on pro-Gadaffi air force—according to the opposition sources, hundreds of pilots, technicians and ground personnel have defected to the opposition during the first half of March.On the same day, on 13 March 2011, according to the news published on 20 March by the opposition media wing Al Manara Media, pilot Muhammad Mokhtar Osman crashed his fighter jet, an MiG-23BN, on Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli in an apparent kamikaze-style suicide attack on pro-Gadaffi military high command, in which Khamis Gadaffi was heavily wounded and died from his wounds a week later on 20 March; however, this news wasn't confirmed by any independent sources and was right away denied by pro-Gadaffi media wing, and was finally confirmed to be misinformation when on 9 June a captured pro-Gadaffi loyalist soldier in Misrata told the rebel forces that he personally saw that Khamis Gadaffi was alive and well, leading his soldiers in Zliten.