Two bulldozers guarded by armed men started to demolish the walls around ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi’s former home in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Sunday. As the bulldozers set to on the Bab al-Azizyah compound, men chanted, ‘God is greatest. This is for the blood of the martyrs.’ Some fired machine guns into the air.
‘We are destroying it because we want to demolish anything that belongs to Gaddafi,’ one gunman, Essam Sarag, told Reuters. People driving past stopped their cars and joined a crowd waving new Libyan flags. ‘We will continue until we destroy everything that belongs to Gaddafi,’ said Etman Lelktah, who said he was in charge of the fighters at the scene.
‘We ask that a peace organisation be built instead of Gaddafi’s place.’ The heavily fortified compound, six sq-km (2.3 sq mi), was both the seat of Gaddafi’s power and his Tripoli home. It was targetted by NATO warplanes several times before Tripoli fell to the now ruling National Transitional Council in August.
Meanwhile, fghters of Libya’s new regime said on Sunday they have launched a fresh assault on Bani Walid, one of the last holdouts of Muammar Gaddafi loyalists, after they were driven back last week. ‘We have resumed combat operations and we have advanced from the northern front as well as from the south,’ said the head of the National Transitional Council (NTC) forces in Bani Walid.
NTC fighters have surrounded the town but their commanders pulled them back last week after suffering heavy losses and to prepare for a new offensive against the 1,500 pro-Gaddafi fighters thought to remain there. A commander from the city of Zawiyah, whose forces are based south of Bani Walid, said his fighters had launched a barrage of artillery fire against the positions of the Gaddafi loyalists.
