Gadhafi killed in hometown, Libya eyes future

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, covered in blood, is pulled from a truck by NTC fighters in Sirte in this still image taken from video footage Oct 20, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

Final hours

One description, pieced together from various sources, suggests Gadhafi tried to break out of his final redoubt at dawn in a convoy of vehicles after weeks of dogged resistance.

However, he was stopped by a French air strike and captured, possibly some hours later, after gun battles with NTC fighters who found him hiding in a drainage culvert.

NATO said its warplanes fired on a convoy near Sirte about 8:30 am (0630 GMT), striking two military vehicles in the group, but could not confirm that Gadhafi had been a passenger. France later said its jets had halted the convoy, which was comprised of some 80 vehicles.

Libyan television carried video of two drainage pipes, about a metre across, where it said fighters had cornered Gadhafi.

After February's uprising in the long discontented east of the country around Benghazi - inspired by the Arab Spring movements that overthrew the leaders of neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt - the revolt against Gadhafi ground slowly across the country before a dramatic turn saw Tripoli fall in August.

Liberation

An announcement of "liberation" - the signal for the start of a transition to elections - was expected on Saturday. The eight weeks since the fall of Tripoli have tested the nerves of the motley alliance of anti-Gadhafi forces and their Western and Arab backers, who had begun to question the ability of the NTC forces to root out diehard Gadhafi loyalists in Sirte and a couple of other towns.

Gadhafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on August 23, a week short of the 42nd anniversary of the military coup which brought him to power in 1969.

By averting a possible dispute in Libya and internationally about where to try him, and denying him a final platform for his trademark lengthy speeches, the summary killing on a desert road may have been helpful for Libyans, some analysts said. 

Hundreds of NTC troops had surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town of Sirte for weeks in a chaotic struggle that killed and wounded scores of the besieging forces and an unknown number of defenders. One NTC official on Thursday recalled an estimate that some 40,000 have died this year.

"There is now this massive expectation. Up to now they've had an excuse that they are running a war. They don't have that now ... Everything now has got to happen," John Hamilton, a Libya expert at Cross Border Information, told Reuters.

"That's a hard task. They have to deliver for the people ... On the other hand, this may renew the honeymoon they enjoyed when Tripoli fell."

Some fear instability may linger and unsettle that process.

"Gadhafi is now a martyr and thus can become the rallying point for irredentist or tribal violence - perhaps not in the immediate future but in the medium-to-long term," said George Joffe, a north Africa expert at Cambridge University.

"The fact that NATO can be blamed for his death is worrying, in terms of regional support, and may undermine the legitimacy of the National Transitional Council."

The death of Gadhafi is a setback to campaigners seeking the full truth about the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland of Pan Am flight 103 which claimed 270 lives, mainly Americans, and for which one of Gadhafi's agents was convicted.

Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, said: "There is much still to be resolved and we may now have lost an opportunity for getting nearer the truth."