Dragged from hiding in a drainage
pipe, a wounded Muammar Gaddafi
raised his hands and begged
revolutionary fighters: "Don't kill
me, my sons."
Within an hour, he was dead, but not
before jubilant Libyans had vented
decades of hatred by pulling the
eccentric dictator's hair and
parading his bloodied body on the
hood of a truck.
Just how Gaddafi died remains
unclear.
The death Thursday (overnight, NZ
time) of Gaddafi, two months after
he was driven from power and into
hiding, decisively buries the nearly
42-year regime that had turned the
oil-rich country into an international
pariah and his own personal fiefdom.
It also thrusts Libya into a new age
in which its transitional leaders must
overcome deep divisions and rebuild
nearly all its institutions from
scratch to achieve dreams of
democracy.
"We have been waiting for this
historic moment for a long time.
Muammar Gaddafi has been killed,"
Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said
in the capital of Tripoli. "I would like
to call on Libyans to put aside the
grudges and only say one word,
which is Libya, Libya, Libya."
US President Barack Obama told the
Libyan people: "You have won your
revolution."
Although the US briefly led the
relentless Nato bombing campaign
that sealed Gaddafi's fate,
Washington later took a secondary
role to its allies. Britain and France
said they hoped that his death would
lead to a more democratic Libya.
Other leaders have fallen in the Arab
Spring uprisings, but the 69-year-old
Gaddafi is the first to be killed. He
was shot to death in his hometown of
Sirte, where revolutionary fighters
overwhelmed the last of his loyalist
supporters Thursday after weeks of
heavy battles.
CIGARETTE BURNS ON BODY?
Also killed in the city was one of his
feared sons, Muatassim, while
another son - one-time heir apparent
Seif al-Islam - was wounded and
captured. An AP reporter saw
cigarette burns on Muatassim's body.
Bloody images of Gaddafi's last
moments raised questions over how
exactly he died after he was
captured wounded, but alive. Video
on Arab television stations showed a
crowd of fighters shoving and pulling
the goateed, balding Gaddafi, with
blood splattered on his face and
soaking his shirt.
Gaddafi struggled against them,
stumbling and shouting as the
fighters pushed him onto the hood of
a pickup truck. One fighter held him
down, pressing on his thigh with a
pair of shoes in a show of contempt.
Fighters propped him on the hood as
they drove for several moments,
apparently to parade him around in
victory.
LIFELESS BODY
"We want him alive. We want him
alive," one man shouted before
Gaddafi was dragged off the hood,
some fighters pulling his hair,
toward an ambulance.
Later footage showed fighters rolling
Gaddafi's lifeless body over on the
pavement, stripped to the waist and
a pool of blood under his head. His
body was then paraded on a car
through Misrata, a nearby city that
suffered a brutal siege by regime
forces during the eight-month civil
war that eventually ousted Gaddafi.
Crowds in the streets cheered, "The
blood of martyrs will not go in vain."
Thunderous celebratory gunfire and
cries of "God is great" rang out
across Tripoli well past midnight,
leaving the smell of sulfur in the air.
People wrapped revolutionary flags
around toddlers and flashed V for
victory signs as they leaned out car
windows. Martyrs' Square, the
former Green Square from which
Gaddafi made many defiant
speeches, was packed with revelers.
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