Updated 7pm

LIBYA HAS THIS evening denied reports that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was wounded on and the run as had earlier been alleged by Italy.

Government spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim said that Gaddafi was “in very good health, high morale and high spirits.”

The spokesperson also said that 11 Muslim clerics were killed in their sleep by a NATO airstrike on Friday in the eastern oil town of Brega.

The clerics were among a large group of imams who had gathered in Brega to pray for peace in conflict-ridden Libya and added that 50 people wounded, including five in critical condition.

NATO, responding to the Libyan claim, said it had attacked a command-and-control center used by Gaddafi’s forces in Brega and said it was “very careful in the selection of our targets”

Earlier, the Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini said that he’s been told by a Catholic bishop in Tripoli that Gaddafi was “most probably outside Tripoli and probably even wounded” in NATO airstrikes, reports Reuters.

Gaddafi’s compound was hit during a NATO airstrike on 30 April, killing Gaddafi’s son and grandchildren, but the leader made a TV appearance earlier this week which seemed designed to quash rumours that he had been hit by bombing.

Italy is pushing for an international arrest warrant to be issued by the International Criminal Court. Frattini says his country’s military mission in Libya is likely to end:

At the end of the month, when in all probability the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will issue arrest warrants against Colonel Gaddafi and certain members of his regime, perhaps members of his family.

He says that after the warrants are issued, the international community will have a responsibility to pursue Gaddafi.

- additional reporting from AP and Hugh O’Connell