Toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed on Thursday in a final assault by new regime forces on the last pocket of resistance in his hometown Sirte, sparking wild joy and celebratory gunfire across the embattled country. “We announce to the world that Gaddafi has died in the custody of the revolution,” National Transitional Council (NTC) spokesman Abdel Hafez Ghoga said in the eastern city of Benghazi. “It is an historic moment. It is the end of tyranny and dictatorship. Gaddafi has met his fate,” he added. He said the fugitive despot’s death had been “confirmed by our commanders on the ground in Sirte, those who captured him after he had been wounded in the battle for Sirte”.
PHOTO, VIDEO:
A photograph taken on a mobile phone appeared to show the 69-year-old Gaddafi heavily bloodied. In the blurry image, Gaddafi is seen with blood-soaked clothing and blood daubed across his face. His last words recorded on the video were “Don’t shoot”, “Don’t shoot”. A video circulating among NTC fighters in Sirte showed mobile phone footage of what appeared to be Gaddafi’s bloodied corpse. In the grainy images, a large number of NTC fighters are seen yelling in chaotic scenes around a khaki-clad body which has blood oozing from the face and neck. The body is then dragged off by the fighters and loaded in the back of a pick-up truck.
DRAINAGE PIPES:
Accounts were hazy of Gaddafi’s final hours, which also appeared to have cost the lives of senior aides. But top officials of the NTC, including Abdel Majid Mlegta, said he had died of wounds sustained in clashes. 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 air strike and captured, possibly three or four hours later, after gun battles with NTC fighters who found him hiding in a drainage culvert. NATO said its warplanes fired on a convoy near Sirte about 8.30am, striking two military vehicles in the group, but could not confirm that Gaddafi had been a passenger. 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 metre across, where it said fighters had cornered a man who long inspired both fear and admiration around the world. Another NTC commander said one of Gaddafi’s sons, Mutassim, was also killed in Sirte. As Libyans on the streets of Tripoli and Sirte fired automatic weapons into the air and danced for joy, world leaders welcomed Gaddafi’s demise as the end of despotism, tyranny, dictatorship and ultimately war in the north African country.
LIBERATION:
The fall of Sirte marks a milestone. Libya’s new rulers had said that only once the city had fallen would they declare the country’s liberation and begin the transition to an elected government. The chairman of the NTC will declare the country liberated from Gaddafi’s rule later on Thursday or, at the latest, on Friday, NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference. “Mr Mustafa Abdel Jalil will come out today or by maximum tomorrow, to declare the liberation of the country and to give out specific details regarding the killing of Gaddafi,” Jibril said.