Gaddafi was killed by NTC fighters in Sirte SIRTE – Fugitive Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed on Thursday, October 20, in his hometown of Sirte, sparking wild celebrations that eight months of war may finally be over.
"He was killed in an attack by the fighters,” Mahmoud Shammam, information minister of the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC), told Reuters.
“There is footage of that."
Details of Gaddafi’s death near his hometown of Sirte were hazy but it was announced by several NTC officials and backed up by a photograph of a bloodied face ringed by familiar, Gaddafi-style curly hair.
Several NTC fighters in Sirte said they had seen Gaddafi shot dead, though their accounts varied.
"He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head," NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters.
"There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."
Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi, who was in his late 60s, was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked.
An NTC fighter in Sirte said he had seen Gaddafi shot after he was cornered and captured in a tunnel near a roadway.
Western powers, who have backed the rebellion which took the capital Tripoli two months ago, said they were still checking.
NATO said its aircraft fired on a convoy near Sirte earlier, but would not confirm reports that Gaddafi had been a passenger.
Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by opposition forces on Aug. 23 after 42 years of one-man rule over the oil-producing North African state.
Gaddafi’s death is the most dramatic development since the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt and threaten the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.
Gaddafi’s Entourage Falls
Officials said some of Gaddafi’s entourage had been killed and arrested, including his son Mo’tassim.
"Our information from the commanders in the field is that Mo'tassim Gaddafi has been captured alive in Sirte," Shammam told Reuters.
Shammam said he could not independently verify the report.
Earlier, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya had said Mo'tassim was captured. Al Arabiya said it would broadcast images of Mo'tassim after his capture.
Gaddafi’s defense minister Abu Bakr Younus was also killed in Sirte.
Al-Jazeera television broadcast footage of Younus showing a bearded man with a bullet hole just below his neck.
The NTC also said that Gaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim was also captured.
"I've seen him with my own eyes," Abdul Hakim Al-Jalil, commander of the 11th brigade, told Reuters.
"Moussa Ibrahim was also captured and both of them were transferred to (our) operations room."
Gaddafi’s death and the collapse of his entourage mean Libya's ruling NTC should now begin the task of forging a new democratic system which it had said it would get under way after the city, built as a showpiece for Gaddafi's rule, had fallen.
As potentially vast revenues from oil and gas begin to roll in again, Libya's six million people, scattered in towns spread across wide deserts, face a major task in organizing a new system of government that can allocate resources across long-competing tribal, ethnic and regional divisions.
