Muammar Gaddafi's seat of power in Tripoli has fallen as rebel fighters swarmed into his fortified compound, stamping on a gilded bronze head of the deposed despot and setting fire to his famous tent in a cathartic end to his 42-year dictatorship.
But the Libyan leader and his family, were nowhere to be found. If they had indeed spent the last days of their rule inside their walled citadel, Bab al-Aziziya, they had since melted away, possibly through the labyrinth of tunnels that lie beneath the compound, an insurance policy against such a day.
Gaddafi told a television station that his withdrawal from the compound had been a tactical move, Reuters reported. He also vowed death or victory in the fight against "aggression", telling al-Orouba TV that his Tripoli headquarters had been levelled to the ground after 64 Nato air strikes.
In the streets beyond the compound, gunfire continued to ring out, although it was unclear whether it was a result of continued skirmishes or celebrations. There were also reports of sporadic looting as darkness fell. Rebel leaders said 400 people had been killed and 2,000 injured during the fighting. With Gaddafi's whereabouts unknown, nobody could say for sure whether the bloodshed was over for good.
Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after National Transitional Council fighters overran loyalist defences in the toppled Libyan leader's hometown and final stronghold of Sirte.
But questions remained on Thursday over the circumstances of Gaddafi's death as footage appeared to show he had been captured alive, following an apparent attempt to flee the besieged coastal city in a convoy which came under fire from French warplanes and a US drone aircraft.
Other footage showed Gaddafi's lifeless and bloodied body being dragged along a road.
"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto Libyan prime minister, told reporters on Thursday in Tripoli, the capital.
Asked what would be done with Gaddafi's body, he said: "It doesn't make any difference, as long as he disappears".
Jibril said Gaddafi had been shot in the head "in crossfire" between his supporters and NTC fighters after his capture.
"He was alive up to last moment, until he arrived at hospital" in the city of Misrata, Jibril said.
After his death, Gaddafi's body was reportedly transferred to a mosque in the city.
Crowds took to the streets of Sirte, Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi, the eastern city that spearheaded the uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule in February, to celebrate the news, with some firing guns and waving Libya's new flag.
"I'm so proud now," a Tripoli resident told Al Jazeera."It's a new era. Look to our eyes and you'll see happiness, finally".
Government strongholds remained in the coastal town of Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace, and the southern desert city of Sabha, and there was no word last night on whether his supporters would carry on fighting. But the fall of Gaddafi's fortress-like city within a city, and the trampling of his likeness under the feet of Libya's new rulers, represented a symbolic moment of victory after a six-month civil war. Earlier in the day, loyalist snipers and mortars had held the rebels at bay in the streets around Bab al-Aziziya.
The rebels responded with every weapon in their possession: artillery, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the sky. By the afternoon, bolstered by waves of opposition fighters who had streamed in from Libya's western mountains and the rebel enclave of Misrata to the east, they began to move forward on Bab al-Aziziya.
They massed at the pale green outer walls and blew the gates off, pouring into what had once been the regime's inner sanctum on foot, in cars, even in requisitioned golf carts. Another two layers of fortifications were quickly breached and, as the sun set, the rebels reached Gaddafi's residence, climbing on the statue of a fist clutching a US warplane, a symbol of his defiance after an American bombing raid in 1986.
A handful of rebels also tore the golden face off Gaddafi's statue, throwing it to the ground, prodding it with rifles and kicking it, while others climbed on to the roof of the building, little more than a shell after repeated Nato bombing sorties, and unfurled the red, black and green flag of pre-Gaddafi Libya.
Son killed
One of Gaddafi's sons, Mutassim, was also killed on Thursday, having been hiding with his father, Mahmoud Shammam, Libya's information minister said. Earlier reports had suggested that he had been captured alive but injured.
News of Gaddafi's death, weeks after NTC fighters effectively ended his four-decades rule by capturing Tripoli, came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte after weeks of fierce fighting.
Fighters flashing V for victory took to the streets in pick-ups blaring out patriotic music.
"Thank God they have caught this person. In one hour, Sirte was liberated," a fighter said.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from Sirte, said Libyans there were celebrating the beginning of a "new Libya".
"This is bringing a form of closure," he said. "Gaddafi stayed true to his words, that he would stay in Libya till the end.
"It was surprising to many that he did actually stay here in Sirte - it's taken such a bombardment in the last 13 days. Nothing could survive in here for very long. I think they were starved of food, starved of ammunition, and finally there was nothing to do but to run".
No comments:
Post a Comment