Gaddafi killed as Libya's revolt takes hometown

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Gaddafi killed as Libya's revolt takes hometown

By Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor | Reuters – 36 minutes ago

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi is dead, Libya's new leaders said,

killed by fighters who overran his hometown and final bastion on Thursday. His

bloodied body was stripped and displayed around the world from cellphone video.

Senior officials in the interim government, which ended his 42-year rule two

months ago but had labored to subdue thousands of diehard loyalists, said his

death opened the way for a declaration of " liberation " after eight months of

war.

His body was expected in the long-standing rebel stronghold of Misrata,

officials said as their Western sponsors held off from confirming that Gaddafi,

a self-styled king of kings whom they had lately courted after decades of

enmity, was dead at 69.

After Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril confirmed his demise, the new national flag,

resurrected by rebels who forced Gaddafi from his capital Tripoli in August,

filled streets and squares as jubilant crowds whooped for joy and fired in the

air.

In Sirte, a one-time fishing village and Gaddafi's hometown that grandiose

schemes had styled a new " capital of Africa, " fighters danced, brandishing a

golden pistol they said they had taken from Gaddafi.

Accounts were hazy of his final hours, which also appeared to have cost the

lives of senior aides. But top officials of the National Transitional Council,

including Abdel Majid Mlegta, said he had died of wounds sustained in clashes.

FINAL HOURS

One possible description, pieced together from various sources, suggests that

Gaddafi may have tried to break out of his final redoubt at dawn in a convoy of

vehicles after weeks of dogged resistance. However, he was stopped by a NATO

airstrike and captured, possibly three or four hours later, after gunbattles

with NTC fighters who found him hiding in a drainage culvert.

NATO said its warplanes fired on a convoy near Sirte about 8:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m.

EDT), striking two military vehicles in the group, but could not confirm that

Gaddafi had been a passenger.

Accounts from his enemies suggested his capture, and death soon after from

wounds, may have taken place around noon.

One of Gaddafi's sons, heir-apparent Saif al-Islam, was at large, they believed.

NTC official Mlegta told Reuters that Gaddafi had been wounded in both legs

early in the morning as he tried to flee in the convoy which NATO warplanes

attacked

" He was also hit in his head, " he said. " There was a lot of firing against his

group and he died. "

There was no shortage of NTC fighters in Sirte claiming to have seen him die,

though many accounts were conflicting. Libyan television carried video of two

drainage pipes, about a meter across, where it said fighters had cornered a man

who long inspired both fear and admiration around the world.

After February's uprising in the long discontented east of the country around

Benghazi -- inspired by the Arab Spring movements that overthrew the leaders of

neighboring Tunisia and Egypt -- the revolt against Gaddafi ground slowly across

the country before a dramatic turn saw Tripoli fall in August.

LIBERATION

An announcement of final liberation was expected as the chairman of the NTC

prepared to address the nation of six million. They now face the challenge of

turning oil wealth once monopolized by Gaddafi and his clan into a democracy

that can heal an array of tribal, ethnic and regional divisions he exploited.

The two months since the fall of Tripoli have tested the nerves of the motley

alliance of anti-Gaddafi forces and their Western and Arab backers, who had

begun to question the ability of the NTC forces to root out diehard Gaddafi

loyalists in Sirte and a couple of other towns.

Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the

killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on August 23, a week short of

the 42nd anniversary of the military coup which brought him to power in 1969.

NTC fighters hoisted the red, black and green national flag above a large

utilities building in the center of a newly-captured Sirte neighborhood and

celebratory gunfire broke out among their ecstatic and relieved comrades.

Hundreds of NTC troops had surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town for weeks

in a chaotic struggle that killed and wounded scores of the besieging forces and

an unknown number of defenders.

NTC fighters said there were a large number of corpses inside the last redoubts

of the Gaddafi troops. It was not immediately possible to verify that

information.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Stamp)