Libya's ousted leader Colonel Moamar Gaddafi is refusing to acknowledge defeat as his rebel countrymen hunt for him in order to deliver a certain death.
Rebels have raised the possibility that Gaddafi may have been able to flee to
Sirte, his birthplace on the Mediterranean coast which remains under control
of loyalist troops.
A defiant Gaddafi vowed to keep fighting on Wednesday, hours after his fortified compound was overrun by rebel fighters, a
Gaddafi's whereabouts are unknown but in a broadcast address the longtime leader urged citizens in the city to fight back.
At least two major towns, as well as many smaller ones, remain in support him, and it is obvious that more gun battles lie ahead before
the rebels can claim the entire country.
But the fall of his Bab al-Aziziya compound heralded the symbolic end of his four-decade rule over Libya.
In an address from an unknown location broadcast on sympathetic local
media because state television was taken over by rebels Tuesday,
Gaddafi said that he had abandoned his compound in a “tactical move”
and that he pledged to fight on “until victory or death.”
Gaddafi said he was in Tripoli and called on residents and tribesmen
across the country to liberate the capital from “devils and traitors.”
Gaddafi, kknown as the Mad Dog of Tripoli, told listening Libyans: “I have been out a bit in Tripoli discreetly
without being seen by people, and I did not feel that Tripoli was in
danger.”
In a telephone interview with the same television station, al-Orouba
TV, Gaddafi’s chief spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, vowed that “we will be
back to take Tripoli.”
Meanwhile, a group of journalists were freed from a luxury hotel where they had been
effectively held captive by Gaddafi loyalists since the weekend, CNN reported. CNN correspondent Matthew Chance said the group left the hotel in the company of officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross and boarded a bus to a safe location in Tripoli.
“We’re immensely relieved, all of us,” Chance said.
