MUAMMAR GADDAFI WAS KILLED IN SIRTE

Published October 20, 2011

MUAMMAR GADDAFI WAS KILLED

IN SIRTE

Muammar Gaddafi was captured as his hometown of Sirte was falling on Thursday 10/20/2011, the NTC commander said, adding that the ousted Libyan strongman was badly wounded.

“He has been captured. He is badly wounded, but he is still breathing,” Mohamed Leith told AFP, adding that he had seen Gaddafi himself and that he was wearing a khaki uniform and a turban.

Al-Arabiya TV station reported that Gaddafi had been killed while being captured, and that his corpse had been moved to Misrata, while other reports from say he was wounded in both legs, The Daily Mail reported. Libyan TV channel Libya lil Ahrar said that Gaddafi was in custody.

The Daily Mail also reported that one rebel fighter reportedly said the leader was hiding in a hole in Sirte, shouting “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot” when his position was uncovered. Gaddafi and his family have been on the run since NATO and rebels started closing the net on Tripoli in mid-August.

Neither NATO nor the US State Department were able to confirm Gaddafi’s capture. The TNC’s UK spokesman, Mahmoud Nacua, warned that there was “not enough information” to confirm Gaddafi’s capture, and a former TNC spokesman in Britain, Guma al Gamati told Sky News that “this is not confirmed”.

Although the capture was unconfirmed, ships and cars were sounding their horns in the capital and guns were being fired in celebration.

Interim government forces had been facing heavy resistance from snipers in the city, and used heavy artillery during its offensive. Thousands of civilians have fled.

Sirte was the last holdout against rebel forces. The town’s capture would pave the way for the TNC to officially take control of Libya and move its headquarters away from its Benghazi stronghold in the east to the capital, Tripoli.

In Sirte, medics said the defence minister in Gaddafi’s ousted regime, Abu Bakr Younis, had been killed in the final battle for the strongman’s hometown. His body was identified at the field hospital where it was brought in a pick-up truck on Thursday, Dr Abdu Rauf told AFP.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in response to reports of Gaddafi’s capture that only the Libyan people could decide the deposed strongman’s fate.

Eventually Abdelhakim Belhaj, the NTC military chief in Tripoli, said Gaddafi had died of his wounds after being captured near Sirte on Thursday According to some reports on of his sons, Mutassim Gaddafi, was captured. Abdul Hakim Al Jalil, commander of the NTC’s 11th brigade, said that Moussa Ibrahim, former spokesman for Gaddafi’s fallen government, had been captured near Sirte.

France’s defense minister Gerard Longuet told reporters in Paris, on Thursday afternoon, that a French strike stopped the convoy of about 80 vehicles heading for Bani Walid, but did not destroy it. He said that fighters on the ground then intercepted the vehicle carrying Gaddafi himself.

Muammar Gaddafi, as it was clearly seen in a footage from a cell phone distributed in the web, was beaten and lynched in the main square of Sirte by Militia fighters from Miserata, who captured him. Mutassim Gaddafi was killed too in the lynch.

It remains to see what will be the impact of Muammar Gaddafi’s “martyrdom” and whether the tribes loyal to Muammar Gaddafi will carry on the fight or look for some sort of political arrangement.

** Dozens of thousands demonstrators in the Syrian town of Homs, the third largest city in Syria, where a full Syrian army division is controlling the town, flooded the streets in the evening shouting slogans promising the same end to the Syrian president Bashar Assad.

* Related topics ;

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10/2011 -ZAWAHIRI IN A NEW FOOTAGE WARNS AGAINST NATO
10/2011 -LIBYAN SAMI AL-SAADI TO SUE U.K
09/2011 -SOPHISTICATED LIBYAN WAEPON SIEZED IN EGYPTIAN SINAI

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