Libyans Mark Gadhafi’s Death

Posted October 21st, 2011 at 4:05 am (UTC-5)
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Libyans continued celebrating the demise of former leader Moammar Gadhafi on Friday, as provisional government leaders planned his secret burial.

Gadhafi was killed Thursday as National Transitional Council fighters stormed his hometown of Sirte, which was the last stronghold for Gadhafi loyalists.

Jubilant Libyans took to the streets to react to the news. Some fired celebratory shots into the air and waved the new national flag.

There are conflicting accounts about how Gadhafi died.

Interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said the former leader was pulled from a hiding place in a sewage pipe in Sirte and later mortally wounded in crossfire between pro- and anti-Gadhafi fighters.

Other officials said he was beaten and then killed.

Cellphone video from the scene has shown National Transitional Council fighters carrying a wounded and bleeding Gadhafi shortly before he died. Later images showed him apparently dead.

NTC officials say the interim government will formally announce Libya's liberation from Gadhafi's rule on Saturday and begin talks on a government transition.

The provisional government received help from NATO, which launched an air campaign over Libya in April to protect civilians from Gadhafi's forces.

NATO members are expected to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss ending the campaign. Europe 1 radio quotes French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe as saying NATO's military operation is Libya can be considered over and its objectives achieved.

Gadhafi had ruled Libya for more than four decades when a rebellion began in February in the eastern city of Benghazi and then spread across the country.

Libyan officials said one of Gadhafi's sons, Mutassim, also was killed in Sirte on Thursday as was longtime defense chief Abu Baker Younis. Another Gadhafi son, Seif al-Islam, was variously reported to be surrounded, captured or killed in a village near Sirte as conflicting accounts of the day's events circulated.