Sirte falls to NTC; rumors of Qaddafi’s capture circulate - By Al Arabiya with Agencies

Libyan interim government fighters captured Muammar Qaddafi’s home town on Thursday, extinguishing the last significant holdout of resistance by troops loyal to the deposed leader and ending a two-month siege.

The capture of Sirte means Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) should now begin the task forging a new democratic system which it had said it would start after the city, built as a showpiece for Qaddafi’s rule, had fallen.

“Sirte has been liberated. There are no Qaddafi forces anymore,” said Colonel Yunus Al Abdali, head of operations in the eastern half of the city. “We are now chasing his fighters who are trying to run away.”

Another commander confirmed the city had been captured and some rebel fighters beeped their car horns and shouted “congratulations” to one another.


Qaddafi captured?

News reports were conflicting on whether Qaddafi was arrested. Initially, Libyan TV channels circulated reports that the embattled leader himself was arrested.

Reuters reported an NTC official as saying that Qaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs.

Libyan NTC fighters said that they were arresting former Libyan officials and medics said that Qaddafi’s defense minister, Abu Bakr Yunis, was dead.

A group of some 40 vehicles carrying Qaddafi forces had broken out of the city and had headed west, NTC fighters said.

“The Qaddafi people broke out west, but the revolutionaries have them surrounded and are dealing with them,” said one of the fighters, Abdul Salam Mohammad.

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

Meanwhile, the troops did not allow reporters to enter the positions formerly held by the Qaddafi loyalists as they said mopping up operations were still underway.

“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 after Sirte’s fall. “The city has been liberated.”

At least 16 pro-Qaddafi fighters were captured, along with multiple cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw the fighters beating captured Qaddafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

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