![End of an era ... Muammar Gaddafi is dead.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720190/art-gaddafi9-420x0.jpg)
However, mobile phone video apparently of Gaddafi alive and being beaten might inflame his sympathisers.
A Libyan official said Gaddafi, 69, was killed in custody.
![Libyan National Transitional Council fighters hold what they claim to be the gold-plated gun of the ousted Libyan leader.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720289/art-gun-420x0.jpg)
"It's time to start a new Libya, a united Libya," Mr Jibril added. "One people, one future."
A formal declaration of liberation, that will set the clock ticking on a timeline to elections, would be made by Friday, he said.
![Gaddafi dead ... Libyans celebrate at Martyrs square in Tripoli.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720186/art-gaddafi7-420x0.jpg)
A spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined Gaddafi in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen. Jerky video shown on al-Jazeera showed a man looking like Gaddafi, with distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.
"They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed," one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. "He might have been resisting."
![Last stand ... an anti-Gaddafi fighter points at the drain where Muammar Gaddafi was reportedly hiding before he was captured.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720183/art-gaddafi1-420x0.jpg)
Officials said his son Mutasin, also seen bleeding but alive in a video, had also died. Another son, heir-apparent Seif al-Islam, was variously reported to have surrounded, been captured or killed as conflicting accounts of the day's events crackled around networks of NTC fighters rejoicing in Sirte.
In Benghazi, where in February Gaddafi disdainfully said he would hunt down the "rats" who had emulated their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbours by rising up against an unloved autocrat, thousands took to the streets, firing their weapons and dancing under the old tricolour flag revived by Gaddafi's opponents.
![Jubilation .... anti-Gaddafi fighters celebrate the fall of Sirte.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720191/art-gaddafi10-420x0.jpg)
"But Gaddafi was a terrible dictator and this was the only way to get rid of him. We want everything people have in free countries - we want people to live in peace as you do across the Mediterranean where life doesn't require the machinegun."
In Sirte, a one-time fishing village and Gaddafi's home town in which grandiose schemes had styled a new "capital of Africa" for the "king of kings", fighters whooped with delight and some brandished a golden pistol they said they had taken from Gaddafi.
![Bloody end ... An injured Muammar Gaddafi, covered in blood, is pulled from a truck by NTC fighters in Sirte in this still image taken from video footage.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720184/art-gaddafi2-420x0.jpg)
Final hours
One possible description, pieced together from various sources, suggests Gaddafi tried to break out of his final place of refuge at dawn in a convoy of vehicles after weeks of dogged resistance.
![Killed in Sirte ... Muammar Gaddafi.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720189/art-gaddafi3-420x0.jpg)
NTC fighters were seen waving a gold-plated gun, which they said belonged to Gaddafi.
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. France later said its jets had been in action at the time.
![Muammar Gaddafi, pictured in 1977 with then Cuba Leader Fidel Castro.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720185/art-gaddafi4-420x0.jpg)
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 neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt - the revolt against Gaddafi ground slowly across the country before Tripoli fell dramatically in August.
Liberation
![People celebrate outside the Libyan embassy in Knightsbridge, London.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720187/art-gaddafi6-420x0.jpg)
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 that brought him to power in 1969.
![Ruled with an iron fist ... Muammar Gaddafi.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720188/art-gaddafi8-420x0.jpg)
"There is now this massive expectation. Up to now they've had an excuse that they are running a war. They don't have that now ... Everything now has got to happen," John Hamilton, a Libya expert at Cross Border Information, told Reuters.
"That's a hard task. They have to deliver for the people. On the other hand, this may renew the honeymoon they enjoyed when Tripoli fell, if they can put a decent government together in a short time."
![Taking credit ... US President Barack Obama.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2720182/art-gaddafi-420x0.jpg)
"Gaddafi is now a martyr and thus can become the rallying point for irredentist or tribal violence - perhaps not in the immediate future but in the medium to long term," said George Joffe, a north Africa expert at Cambridge University.
"The fact that NATO can be blamed for his death is worrying, in terms of regional support, and may undermine the legitimacy of the National Transitional Council."
![An anti-Gaddafi fighter points at the drain where Muammar Gaddafi was hiding before he was captured in Sirt.](http://images.theage.com.au/2011/10/21/2719978/gal-land-svLIBYA16-600x400.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment