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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 Gaddafi'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 (Gaddafi) 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 Gaddafi "tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down."
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nitial reports from fighters said Gaddafi had been barricaded in with his heavily armed loyalists in the last few buildings they held in his Mediterranean coastal hometown of Sirt, 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 Gaddafi was in the vehicles. Details of his death remained unverified.
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Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling Gaddafi lying dead or severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said he was told that Gaddafi was dead from fighters who said they saw the body. "Our people in Sirt saw the body," Shammam told The Associated Press. "Revolutionaries say Gaddafi was in a convoy and that they attacked the convoy."
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Other military officials in the government also said Gaddafi was dead and several revolutionary groups fighting in Sirt also said he was either killed or captured.
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Reporters at the scene watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the battle, about five carloads of Gaddafi 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.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gaddafi forces "which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirt."

But NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance to alliance rules, said the alliance also could not independently confirm whether Gaddafi was killed or captured.
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The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Gaddafi. Another commander, Abdel-Basit Haroun, says Gaddafi was killed when the airstrike hit the fleeing convoy.

In a sign of the conflicting versions, military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV, "I can assure everyone in Libya that Gaddafi has been killed for sure and I'm definitely sure and I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed."

But rather than a strike on the convoy, he said a wounded Gaddafi "tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down."

The spokesman for Libya's transitional government, Jalal al-Gallal, and another military spokesman Abdul-Rahman Busin said the reports have not been confirmed.

The caution in making a definitive announcement came because past reports of Gaddafi family deaths or captures have later proven incorrect, even after they were announced by officials, because of the confusion among the revolutionary forces' ranks and the multiple bodies involved in commanding their fighters. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097359-1,00.html was my first thought, too, when I heard the news. There have been reports which have been proven wrong, so skepticism isn't surprising. Does sound like this is for real, tho', however it came about.


Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off