Gaddafi 'killed in Sirte battle'

Muammar Gaddafi was captured and possibly killed when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his home town, Sirte, transitional government officials said today.

During the fighting, Nato blasted a fleeing convoy that fighters said was carrying the ex-Libyan dictator.

There was no immediate confirmation of Gaddafi’s capture or death from Libya’s senior leadership.

Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling Gaddafi lying dead or severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said he was told that Gaddafi was dead from fighters who said they saw the body.

He said he expects the prime minister to confirm the death soon, noting that past reports emerged “before making 100 % confirmation”. Several revolutionary groups fighting in Sirte also reported Gaddafi was either killed or captured.

“Our people in Sirte saw the body ... Mustafa Abdul-Jalil will confirm it soon,” said Mr Shammam.

“Revolutionaries say Gaddafi was in a convoy and that they attacked the convoy.”

Celebratory gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” rang out across Tripoli as the reports spread.

Cars honked their horns and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city’s fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.

The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Gaddafi. Another commander, Abdel-Basit Haroun, says Gaddafi was killed when the airstrike hit the fleeing convoy.

In a sign of the conflicting versions, military spokesman Col Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV: “I can assure everyone in Libya that Gaddafi has been killed for sure and I’m definitely sure and I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed.”

But rather than a strike on the convoy, he said a wounded Gaddafi “tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down”.

The spokesman for Libya’s transitional government, Jalal al-Gallal, and another military spokesman Abdul-Rahman Busin said the reports have not been confirmed.

Despite the fall of Tripoli on August 21, Gaddafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya’s new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war.

Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid, and by Tuesday said they had squeezed Gaddafi’s forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square yards but were still coming under heavy fire.

Reporters at the scene watched as the final assault began around 8 am and ended about 90 minutes later.

Just before the battle, about five carloads of Gaddafi loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway that leads out of the city. But they were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them.

Col Roland Lavoie, spokesman for Nato’s operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance’s aircraft today morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gaddafi forces “which were part of a larger group manoeuvring in the vicinity of Sirte.”

But Nato officials said they could not independently confirm whether Gaddafi was killed or captured.

After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any hiding Gaddafi fighters. At least 16 were captured, along with cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Gaddafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

In the central quarter where the final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Gaddafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.

They chanted “Allah akbar” while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution’s flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Gaddafi’s fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.

“Our forces control the last neighbourhood in Sirte,” Hassan Draoua, a member of the NTC. “The city has been liberated.”