Meanwhile, French fighter jets fired the first shots at Moammar Gadhafi’s troops on Saturday, launching the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war in support of an uprising that had seemed on the verge of defeat.

In the hours before the no-fly zone over Libya went into effect, Gadhafi sent warplanes, tanks and troops into Benghazi, the rebel capital and first city to fall to the rebellion that began Feb. 15. Then the government attacks appeared to go silent.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after an emergency summit in Paris that French jets were already targeting Gadhafi’s forces. The 22 participants in Saturday’s summit agreed to do everything necessary to make Gadhafi respect a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday demanding a cease-fire, Sarkozy said.

“Our consensus was strong, and our resolve is clear. The people of Libya must be protected, and in the absence of an immediate end to the violence against civilians our coalition is prepared to act, and to act with urgency,” President Barack Obama said in Brasilia, Brazil, on the first day of a three-country Latin American tour.

The rebels, who have seen their advances into western Libya turn into a series of defeats, said they had hoped for more, sooner from the international community, after a day when crashing shells shook the buildings of Benghazi and Gadhafi’s tanks rumbled through the university campus.

“People are disappointed, they haven’t seen any action yet. The leadership understands some of the difficulties with procedures but when it comes to procedures versus human lives the choice is clear,” said Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the opposition. “People on the streets are saying where are the international forces? Is the international community waiting for the same crimes to be perpetrated on Benghazi has have been done by Gadhafi in the other cities?”

A doctor said 27 bodies had reached hospitals by midday. As night fell, though, the streets were quiet.

Libyan state television showed Gadhafi supporters converging on the international airport and a military garrison in Tripoli, and the airport in Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, in an apparent attempt to deter bombing.

In an open letter, Gadhafi warned: “You will regret it if you dare to intervene in our country.”

In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Gadhafi’s government had lost all legitimacy and lied about the cease-fire.

“We have every reason to fear that left unchecked, Gadhafi will commit unspeakable atrocities,” she said.

Saturday’s emergency meeting involved 22 leaders and top officials, including Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the foreign ministers of Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. It was the largest international military action since the beginning of the Iraq war, launched almost exactly eight years ago.

Earlier Saturday, a plane was shot down over the outskirts of Benghazi, sending up a massive black cloud of smoke. An Associated Press reporter saw the plane go down in flames and heard the sound of artillery and crackling gunfire.

Before the plane went down, journalists heard what appeared to be airstrikes from it. Rebels cheered and celebrated at the crash, though the government denied a plane had gone down — or that any towns were shelled on Saturday.

The fighting galvanized the people of Benghazi, with young men collecting bottles to make gasoline bombs. Some residents dragged bed frames and metal scraps into the streets to make roadblocks.

“This city is a symbol of the revolution, it’s where it started and where it will end if this city falls,” said Gheriani.

But at Jalaa hospital, where the tile floors and walls were stained with blood, the toll was clear.

“There are more dead than injured,” said Dr. Ahmed Radwan, an Egyptian who had been there helping for three weeks.

Jalaa’s Dr. Gebreil Hewadi, a member of the rebel health committee, said city hospitals had received 27 bodies.

At a news conference in the capital, Tripoli, the government spokesman read letters from Gadhafi to Obama and others involved in the international effort.

“Libya is not yours. Libya is for the Libyans. The Security Council resolution is invalid,” he said in the letter to Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

To Obama, the Libyan leader was slightly more conciliatory: “If you had found them taking over American cities with armed force, tell me what you would do.”

In a joint statement to Gadhafi late Friday, the United States, Britain and France — backed by unspecified Arab countries — called on Gadhafi to end his troops’ advance toward Benghazi and pull them out of the cities of Misrata, Ajdabiya and Zawiya. It also called for the restoration of water, electricity and gas services in all areas. It said Libyans must be able to receive humanitarian aid or the “international community will make him suffer the consequences” with military action.

Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa said that Libyan officials had informed the U.N. and the Security Council that the government was holding to the cease-fire it had announced Friday and called for a team of foreign observers to verify that.

“The nation is respecting all the commitments put on it by the international community,” he said, leaving the podium before answering any questions about Benghazi.

In the course of the rebellion, Libya has gone from a once-promising economy with the largest proven oil reserves in Africa to a country in turmoil. The foreign workers that underpinned the oil industry have fled; production and exports have all but ground to a halt; and its currency is down 30 percent in just two weeks.

The oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, held a news conference calling on foreign oil companies to send back their workers. He said the government would honor all its contracts.

“It is not our intention to violate any of these agreements and we hope that from their part they will honor this agreement and they will send back their work forces,” he said.

Italy, which had been the main buyer for Libyan oil, offered the use of seven air and navy bases already housing U.S., NATO and Italian forces to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya.

Italy’s defense minister, Ignazio La Russa, said Saturday that Italy wasn’t just “renting out” its bases for others to use but was prepared to offer “moderate but determined” military support.

A French fighter jet fired Saturday on a Libyan military vehicle, the first reported offensive action in the international military operation against Gadhafi’s forces, French Defense Ministry spokesman Thierry Burkhard said.

Warplanes from the United States, Canada, Denmark arrived at Italian air bases Saturday as part of an international military buildup. Germany backed the operation but isn’t offering its own forces.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said after the summit: “The time for action has come, it needs to be urgent.”

Al-Shalchi contributed from Tripoli, Libya. Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Cairo; Nicole Winfield in Rome; and Jamey Keaten in Paris also contributed to this report.

Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the national opposition council based in Benghazi, says “no cease-fire.”

Gheriani says regime forces are shelling the eastern city of Ajdabiya and Misrata, the last rebel-held city in the western half of the country.

Western powers are racing to prevent more attacks after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution setting the stage for airstrikes, a no-fly zone and other military measures short of a ground invasion.

Meanwhile, oil prices are tumbling after the announcement. Benchmark crude swiftly dropped afterward on the New York Mercantile Exchange, with the price plunging about $3 in 15 minutes, or nearly 3 percent.

Oil is down 37 cents at $101.05 just minutes after the Nymex opened for trading.

Libya has been embroiled in a month-long rebellion that effectively stopped about 1.5 million barrels per day of oil exports. Tensions increased further as forces loyal to strongman Moammar Gadhafi hammered protesters with air attacks. The United Nations declared a no-fly zone over the country Thursday night.

President Obama met with his National Security Council on Tuesday to consider a variety of other options to respond to the deteriorating situation.

Among those options are jamming Libyan government radio signals and financing the rebel forces with $32 billion in Libyan government and Qaddafi family funds frozen by the United States. That money could be used either for weapons or relief. The meeting broke without a decision, the official said.

While Russia and Germany were expressing doubts about the vote, France was pushing for rapid action with Foreign Minister Alain Juppe saying in Paris that several Arab countries have pledged to participate in possible military action in the North African country.

Juppe wrote on his blog Wednesday that France and Britain have sought targeted air strikes for two weeks and said two conditions are necessary: a Security Council mandate for such force and “effective” participation by Arab states. “Several Arab countries assured us that they will participate,” Juppe wrote, without elaborating.

Lingering doubts among some members over a no-fly zone were immediately apparent after a proposed resolution was introduced Tuesday afternoon in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said council members will discuss the proposed resolution “paragraph by paragraph” when they meet Wednesday because members had “a number of questions about the text.”

Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong said issues to be clarified include whether the ban would apply to all flights countrywide. Indian Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri said he and other members need to know what countries would contribute the assets for enforcing a no-fly zone.

Lebanon, the Security Council’s only Arab member, introduced the no-fly provisions of the draft resolution — strongly endorsed by the Arab League — to council members at a closed meeting Tuesday afternoon. The Arabs are strongly backed by France and Britain, which drafted elements of a no-fly resolution last week.

“We are deeply distressed by the fact that things are worsening on the ground, that the Gadhafi forces are moving forward extremely quickly, and that this council has not yet reacted,” France’s U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters as he headed into the council’s Tuesday meeting.

France and Britain failed to win support for a no-fly zone during a two-day meeting of Group of Eight foreign ministers in Paris earlier Tuesday and the G-8′s final communique did not mention a flight ban. It instead warned of unspecified “dire consequences” if Gadhafi did not honor the Libyan people’s claim to basic rights, freedom of expression, and representative government.

The halting efforts to raise pressure against Gadhafi’s 42-year regime came as his forces used tanks, warships and artillery Tuesday to gain ground near the rebels’ base in eastern Libya.

Lebanon’s U.N. Ambassador Nawaf Salam said the section on the no-fly zone was drafted in consultation with Libya’s U.N. diplomats, who have denounced Gadhafi and back opposition forces. Salam said another section on “the strengthening and widening of sanctions” on Libya was introduced by Britain.

The Arab League called Saturday on the U.N. “to shoulder its responsibility … to impose a no-fly zone over the movement of Libyan military planes and to create safe zones in the places vulnerable to airstrikes.”

Salam said Lebanon has asked Libya’s U.N. Mission to identify specific areas where civilians would need protection and safe passage corridors.

The Security Council on Feb. 26 imposed an arms embargo on Libya and ordered all countries to freeze assets and ban travel for Gadhafi and some close associates. It also referred the regime’s deadly crackdown on protesters to the International Criminal Court, for an investigation of possible crimes against humanity.

U.N. diplomats said the proposed new resolution would call for more muscular enforcement of the arms embargo, add names of individuals, companies and other entities to the list of those subject to travel bans and asset freezes, and ban commercial flights bringing arms or mercenaries into Libya.

The draft resolution would also authorize states to work together to provide humanitarian assistance and take necessary measures to protect civilians. It also would establish a panel of experts to monitor implementation, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the text has not been released.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the G-8 that his country wants more details and clarity from the Arab League about its proposals for Libya before approving any military intervention, and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said his country was “very skeptical” about military action.

Lebanon’s Salam insisted that a no-fly zone “in no way could qualify as a foreign intervention.”

“I would hope that the establishment of a no-fly zone would have a deterrent effect on the Gadhafi regime, not to fly its airplanes to attack civilian areas,” he said.

The White House said President Barack Obama on Tuesday instructed his national security team to “fully engage” in discussions at the United Nations, NATO and with countries and organizations in the region when reviewing options to increase pressure on Gadhafi.

Obama and his top national security aides have been cautious with calls for a no-fly zone, which the Pentagon has described as a step tantamount to war. The U.S. fears it could further strain its already stretched military and entangle the country in an expensive and messy conflict.

Associated Press Writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Jamey Keaten in Paris, and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.

Devastation otherwise stretched hundreds of miles (kilometers) along the coast, where thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers and aid. The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said four whole trains had disappeared Friday and still not been located. Others said that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst hit states, could not confirm those figures, noting that with so little access to the area, thousands of people in scores of town could not be contacted or accounted for.

“Our estimates based on reported cases alone suggest that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the disaster,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “Unfortunately, the actual damage could far exceed that number considering the difficulty assessing the full extent of damage.”

Japan’s worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 tremor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the United State Geological Survey. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

Elsewhere, emergency officials closed some beaches and advised people to stay away from the shoreline.

Surfers in Southern California took advantage of decent waves ahead of the high water expected from a tsunami trekking across the Pacific Ocean.

Off-duty California High Patrol trooper William Hill and two friends unloaded long boards and scrambled into their wet suits Friday on the cliffs above Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz, where a half dozen surfers were already in the water.

They saw the tsunami warnings Thursday night on TV and drove two hours from Stockton to be in the water when the tsunami hit.