Gaddafi is dead, says Libya leader
Muammar Gaddafi has been killed, Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said today.
“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed,” Mr Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.
Gaddafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for 42 years until he was ousted by rebels in a bloody civil war, was killed when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his home town, Sirte.
It was the last major bastion of resistance two months after the regime fell.
Initial reports from fighters said Gaddafi had been holed up with the last of his fighters in the furious battle with revolutionary fighters assaulting the last few buildings they held.
At one point, a convoy tried to flee the area and was blasted by Nato airstrikes, though it was not clear if Gaddafi was in the vehicle.
Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling the 69-year-old Gaddafi lying dead or severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement. Witnesses said his body was put on display in the nearby city of Misrata.
Celebratory gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar” rang out across the capital 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.
