BRUSSELS (AFP) – France and Britain are deploying attack helicopters to strike Moamer Gaddafi's forces, top French ministers said Monday, in a shift in tactics two months into NATO's air war in Libya.

NATO says it has seriously degraded Gaddafi's military machine with a relentless onslaught from combat jets, but it has yet to deliver the death blow to the regime, which still stands in Tripoli while rebels control the east.
The helicopters, a weapon that has yet to be used by NATO in Libya, will help the Western alliance strike regime military assets hidden in urban areas while avoiding civilian casualties, the French ministers said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, on the sidelines of meetings of European Union foreign and defense ministers in Brussels, said Paris was deploying Tigre and Gazelle class helicopters aboard an aircraft carrier.
Juppe said the French helicopters would enable NATO “to better adapt our ground strike capacity with more precise means of (carrying out) strikes.”
France and Britain, who along with the United States launched the first salvos against the Libyan regime on March 19, have repeatedly advocated an intensification of the campaign.