Rebel fighters captured Muammar Gaddafi’s heavily fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound and headquarters in Tripoli on Tuesday after a day of fierce fighting, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
The defenders had fled, and the whereabouts of Gaddafi or his family were unknown after the insurgents breached the defences as part of a massive assault that began in the morning. “Bab al-Aziziya is fully under our control now. Colonel Gaddafi and his sons were not there; there is nobody,” Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani said from the rebel bastion of Benghazi. “No one knows where they are,” he added.
However, a member of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), Fathi Terbel, said: “We are sure that he is not in Tripoli. This is an end which was expected, especially once rebels got inside Tripoli. It is now a matter of time to capture Gaddafi.” The correspondent said the rebels had “breached the surrounding cement walls and entered inside. “They have taken Bab al-Azizya. Completely. It is finished,” the correspondent said.
The correspondent said rebels found an armoury in one of the buildings and were seizing quantities of ammunition, pistols and assault rifles. Another AFP correspondent said hundreds of fighters were celebrating, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, and that whenever they encountered a foreigner they would say “thank you NATO.” The buildings around the compound were completely destroyed. Commenting on the seizure of the compound, a rebel official in the western city of Misrata said that “at the same house used by Gaddafi before to describe the Libyan people as rats, today the independence flag flying on its roof.”
On Tuesday morning, Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, who was reportedly under arrest, made a surprise appearance in Tripoli and announced that his father and family were still in the capital, but declined to say where. “Gaddafi and the entire family are in Tripoli,” Saif told reporters at the Rixos Hotel, where many foreign journalists are housed. Saif also said the regime’s forces had deliberately not tried to prevent the rebels from entering the capital.
“Allowing the rebels to enter Tripoli was a trick,” he said, without elaborating. NATO, meanwhile, said Gaddafi was “not a target” for the military alliance.
