October 20, 2011 7:47 AM

Libyan officials: Qaddafi killed in Sirte

(CBS/AP) 

Fugitive Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was killed in fighting around his hometown Thursday, Libya's prime minister confirmed after hours of speculation surrounding his death.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Qaddafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

Libyan fighters captured Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown and the last bastion of loyalist resistance, earlier Thursday. Shortly after, reports of Qaddafi's capture and subsequent death began to swirl.

The 69-year-old Qaddafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Midde East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and greater democracy. Qaddafi had been one of the world's most mercurial leaders, dominating Libya with a regime that often seemed run by his whims and bringing international condemnation and isolation on his country for years.

Initial reports from fighters said Qaddafi had been barricaded in with his heavily armed loyalists in the last few buildings they held in his Mediterranean coastal hometown of Sirte, furiously battling with revolutionary fighters closing in on them Thursday. At one point, a convoy tried to flee the area and was blasted by NATO airstrikes, though it was not clear if Qaddafi was in the vehicles. Details of his death remained unverified.

Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling the 69-year-old Qaddafi lying dead or severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

The body was then taken to the nearby city of Misrata, which Qaddafi's forces besieged for months in one of the bloodiest fronts of the civil war. Al-Arabiya TV showed footage of Qaddafi's bloodied body carried on the top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain."

A cell phone picture reportedly taken in Sirte apparently shows Qaddafi covered in blood after being dragged through the streets.

Imad Moustaf, a rebel fighter who said he witnessed Qaddafi's death, told GlobalPost's James Foley that Qaddafi was shot in the head and near his heart on the outskirts of Sirte. Moustaf said the former leader had been hiding in a hole surrounded by bodyguards.

Another fighter told the BBC that Qaddafi yelled out "don't shoot" after being discovered.

According to the Telegraph's Ben Farmer, who has been to the site in Sirte where Qaddafi was found, Qaddafi and his bodyguards had taken refuge in a drain after their convoy was struck by a NATO airstrike and were discovered there by TNC fighters.

NATO did acknowledge it hit a convoy of Qaddafi's loyalists fleeing Sirte on Thursday morning but had not confirmed whether the ousted Libyan leader was in the convoy or had been possibly killed or captured.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking from Afghanistan, told CBS News correspondent Whit Johnson that the capture Qaddafi would be a significant development in Libya, but also said she did not expect his capture would end the fighting there.

Clinton spoke before the U.S. was informed that Qaddafi had been confirmed dead.

Celebratory gunfire and cries of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" rang out across the capital Tripoli. Cars honked their horns and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.

Libya's new leaders had said they would declare the country's "liberation" after the fall of Sirte.

The death of Qaddafi adds greater solidity to that declaration.

It rules out a scenario that some had feared — that he might flee deeper into Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign against Libya's rulers. The fate of two of his sons, Seif al-Islam and Muatassim, as well as some top figures of his regime remains unknown, but their ability to rally loyalists would be deeply undermined with Qaddafi's loss.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said he was told that Qaddafi was dead from fighters who said they saw the body.

"Our people in Sirte saw the body," Shammam told The Associated Press. "Revolutionaries say Qaddafi was in a convoy and that they attacked the convoy."

Sirte's fall caps weeks of heavy, street-by-street fighting as revolutionary fighters besieged the city. Despite the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Qaddafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya's new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid.

By Tuesday, fighters said they had squeezed Qaddafi's forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square yards but were still coming under heavy fire from surrounding buildings.

In an illustration of how heavy the fighting has been, it took the anti-Qaddafi fighters two days to capture a single residential building.

Reporters at the scene watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. Thursday and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the battle, about five carloads of Qaddafi loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway that leads out of the city. But they were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them.

The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Qaddafi.

Another commander, Abdel-Basit Haroun, said Qaddafi was killed when the airstrike hit the fleeing convoy.

One fighter who said he was at the battle told AP Television News that the final fight took place at an opulent compound for visiting dignitaries built by Qaddafi's regime. Adel Busamir said the convoy tried to break out but after being hit it turned back and re-entered the compound. Several hundred fighters assaulted.

"We found him there," Busamir said. "We saw them beating him (Qaddafi) and someone shot him with a 9mm pistol ... then they took him away."

Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV that a wounded Qaddafi "tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down."

"I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed," he said.

After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any hiding Qaddafi fighters. At least 16 were captured, along with cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Qaddafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

In the central quarter where Thursday's final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Qaddafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.

They chanted "Allah akbar," or "God is great" in Arabic, while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution's flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Qaddafi's fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.

"Our forces control the last neighborhood in Sirte," Hassan Draoua, a member of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, told The Associated Press in Tripoli. "The city has been liberated."

© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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by noloyalisti October 20, 2011 3:46 PM EDT
We should also praise Obama again for his support of the people in the foreign lands that provided information that led to the demise of Osama bin Laden.

Of course they did most of the work, as Miami Don says, but we played a key role in financing it.
Reply to this comment
by noloyalisti October 20, 2011 3:20 PM EDT
I am amazed that we do not see massive praise for Commander in Chief President Obama for another successful operation. Well we can do that here and we can tell a friend!
Reply to this comment
by miami_don October 20, 2011 3:36 PM EDT
No! You're in highgear today. Relax a little and think.

This was not Obama. It was the Libyan people. what you are suggesting would be like the French claiming victory at Yorktown. This was their revolution and they won. Granted we let Cornwallis live but then that was our revolution.
by noloyalisti October 20, 2011 3:44 PM EDT
He had to talk the anti-Americans (the Republicons and others who love war unless a Democrat is asking) into using funds to join NATO (although we were the biggest contributor). I believe that we provide significant funding without which the insurgents would not have won.
by vieteravet October 20, 2011 1:47 PM EDT
It is a shame that most Americans can no longer distinguish between a video game or fantasy movie and real death and destruction. Warmongering is not what the USA was founded upon or was it?
Reply to this comment
by Progress4USA October 20, 2011 12:04 PM EDT
Even is death he's got bad hair.
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by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 12:51 PM EDT
Far better bad hair while fighting for his country, than slicked back hair, destroying societies.
by Zann-Zel October 20, 2011 11:56 AM EDT
cbs isn't doing any better today!
Reply to this comment
by Jazzrgirl October 20, 2011 11:44 AM EDT
This is true...and that's really not what I'm disputing. Guess I'm just appalled that THAT was the way they chose to report it.
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by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 12:49 PM EDT
Why not tell it like it is?

Americans should see close up, that which they support being done in their name, every last bloody drop.

"We want'em dead, but we don't want to see it."

I wish there was a way that TV could rub America's face in the blood spilled in our name, and that the smell of death would come from some component of the TV.

Maybe we wouldn't be so quick to call for people being murdered for nothing.
by 1pheasant1 October 20, 2011 11:40 AM EDT
by Jazzrgirl October 20, 2011 11:14 AM EDT

My son's "educational program" was over--which means the screen goes back to the original station & was looking for the remote to turn it off since we were leaving.

**********************************************************

How tragic! We didn't even have a remote control for our television when President Kennedy's head was blown off. Somehow we survived. Maybe you can figure out a way to program your television so it does not venture away from the "educational" station at the conclusion of said program.
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by rrnc5lmce October 20, 2011 11:38 AM EDT
if this episode is really over, then I pray that the Libyan people move on and work hard so that their country will take it's place among democratic countries of the world...
Reply to this comment
by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 12:45 PM EDT
This episode is just getting started, now cones a decade of civil wars, which no American bagger will care about, all that is important is that they killed the guy they were suckered into hating.

So as the mass murder starts, you will hear them change their tune from "Qaddafi committed this and that, oh the poor rebels, etc." to "Serves 'em right, 'cause they're Muslims!"
by Zann-Zel October 20, 2011 11:24 AM EDT
brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 10:46 AM EDT
The following is why you should care. If we allow our government to do such, then by what right can we condemn others for the same thing against us?

A poem is apropos

"They came for the Communists, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't
a Communist;

They came for the Socialists, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I
didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader;

They came for the Jews, and I didn't
object - For I wasn't a Jew;

Then they came for me -
And there was no one left to object.

Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor,

1892-1984

-------------------
Brian the poem you quoted fits more when you think about the people in our country trying to shut down the unions!
When you think about the protestors on Wall Stret being arrested for peacefully protesting....
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by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 11:27 AM EDT
Agreed, but it is noticeable that the baggers in the US hate the same exact groups of people, with a few "other" ethnic groups thrown in for good measure.

It's almost as if the Nazis didn't lose, they simply moved to America, and became baggers.
by Zann-Zel October 20, 2011 11:35 AM EDT
People like that are called Nazis at one time - something else in another time. THey are cowardly little scared individuals, that are terrified of anything and anyone that looks or acts any different than themselves.
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by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 11:18 AM EDT
@1pheasant1
"...It sounds like the words of a Qaddafi loyalist..."

Well then most of pre-Pearl Harbor America would have been pro Qaddafi, by your logic.

"When it was suggested that World War II was approaching, Americans did not want to go to war. Having sustained losses in World War I and only now coming out of an economic crisis, most Americans thought that energies should be spent here at home, improving America, instead of becoming involved in war overseas. Even as the war started in Europe with the invasion of France, many Americans thought that the U.S. should avoid becoming involved." -Oracle Thinkquest US History.

Now that aside, I am sure that now you want the elderly and poor in America to bear the cost of actions which had nothing whatsoever to do with our security, right?

I can hear it now, "Oh let's cut more social programs, we don't need schools, and as for the elderly, and infirm, scr*w them if they didn't have a job that allowed them to save up."
Reply to this comment
by 1pheasant1 October 20, 2011 11:29 AM EDT
You assume too much, Brian. We need schools, and social programs for the needy, including, but not limited to the elderly and infirm. We also need a vibrant middle class that can support the needs of their families. What we don't need are Americans that support atrocities being committed by the likes of Qaddafi and Hitler, because they feel it is none of our business. Sorry for your loss.
by brianbwb2015 October 20, 2011 12:56 PM EDT
@1pheasant1

So, not wanting to see America break our own laws and international laws, thus becoming worse than those we accuse of doing the same, in the bagger mind equates to supporting Hitler and Qaddafi?

Baggers are such maroons.

I remember a bagger campaign a while back, trying to force everyone in America to speak English.

Funny thing about that baggers are the ones least able to understand English.
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