With armed loyalists of Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the fallen Libyan leader, still ensconced in his hometown and a few other redoubts as the seven-month-old Libyan conflict winds down, NATO announced a three-month extension of its bombing campaign.

“We are determined to continue our mission for as long as necessary, but ready to terminate the operation as soon as possible,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement from the alliance’s Brussels headquarters.

It is the second 90-day extension, and it was approved less than a week before the campaign was set to end, The New York Times reported.