SIRTE, Libya — Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: “Don’t kill me, my sons.”
Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator’s hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck.
The death Thursday of Gadhafi, two months after he was driven from power and into hiding, decisively buries the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich North African country into an international pariah and his personal fiefdom.
It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to achieve dreams of democracy.
“We have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed,” Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in the capital, Tripoli. “I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the grudges and only say one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya.”
President Barack Obama told the Libyan people: “You have won your revolution.”
Although the U.S. briefly led the relentless NATO bombing campaign that sealed Gadhafi’s fate, Washington later took a secondary role to its allies. Britain and France said they hoped his death would lead to a more democratic Libya.
Other leaders have fallen in the Arab Spring uprisings, but Gadhafi, 69, is the first to be killed. He was shot to death in his hometown, Sirte, where revolutionary fighters overwhelmed the last of his loyalist supporters Thursday after weeks of fighting.
Also killed in the city was one of his feared sons, Muatassim, while another son — one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam — was wounded and captured. An Associated Press reporter saw cigarette burns on Muatassim’s body.
Bloody images of Gadhafi’s last moments raised questions over how exactly he died after he was captured wounded but alive. Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Gadhafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.
Gadhafi struggled against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters pushed him onto the hood of a pickup truck. One fighter held him down, pressing on his thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.
Fighters propped him on the hood as they drove for several moments, apparently to parade him around in victory.
“We want him alive. We want him alive,” one man shouted before Gadhafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.
Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi’s lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head. His body was then paraded on a car through Misrata, a nearby city that suffered a brutal siege by regime forces during the eight-month civil war. Crowds in the streets cheered, “The blood of martyrs will not go in vain.”
Cries of “God is great” and thunderous celebratory gunfire rang out across Tripoli well past midnight, leaving the smell of sulfur in the air. People wrapped revolutionary flags around toddlers and flashed V for victory signs. Martyrs’ Square, the former Green Square from which Gadhafi made many defiant speeches, was packed with revelers.
The outpouring of joy reflected the deep hatred of a leader who had brutally warped Libya with his idiosyncratic rule. After seizing power in a 1969 coup that toppled the monarchy, Gadhafi created a “revolutionary” system of “rule by the masses,” which supposedly meant every citizen participated in government but really meant all power was in his hands. He wielded it erratically, imposing random rules while crushing opponents, often hanging in public squares anyone who plotted against him.
The day began with revolutionary forces bearing down on the last of Gadhafi’s heavily armed loyalists, who in recent days had been squeezed into a block of buildings of about 700 square yards.
A large convoy of vehicles moved out of the buildings, and revolutionary forces moved to intercept it, said Fathi Bashagha, spokesman for the Misrata Military Council, which commanded the fighters who captured him. At 8:30 a.m., NATO warplanes struck the convoy, according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet.
Fighters then clashed with loyalists in the convoy for three hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns.
Gadhafi and other supporters fled on foot, with fighters in pursuit, he said. A Gadhafi bodyguard captured as they ran away gave a similar account to Arab TV stations.
Gadhafi and several bodyguards took refuge in a drainage pipe under a highway nearby. After clashes ensued, Gadhafi emerged, telling the fighters outside, “What do you want? Don’t kill me, my sons,” according to Bashagha and Hassan Doua, a fighter who was among those who captured him.
Bashagha said Gadhafi died in the ambulance from wounds suffered during the clashes. Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance during the 120-mile drive to Misrata, said Gadhafi died from two bullet wounds, to the head and chest.
A government account of Gadhafi’s death said he was captured unharmed and later was mortally wounded in the crossfire from both sides.
Amnesty International urged the revolutionary fighters to give a complete report, saying it was essential to conduct “a full, independent and impartial inquiry to establish the circumstances of Col. Gadhafi’s death.”
The TV images of Gadhafi’s bloodied body sent ripples across the Arab world and on social networks such as Twitter. Many wondered whether a similar fate awaits Syria’s Bashar Assad and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, two leaders clinging to power in the face of long-running Arab Spring uprisings. For the millions of Arabs yearning for freedom, democracy and new leadership, the death of one of the region’s most brutal dictators will likely inspire and invigorate the movement for change.
The National Council plans to declare liberation on Saturday, said Mohamed Sayeh, a senior council member. That begins a timetable toward creating a new system: The NTC has said it will form a new interim government within a month of liberation and will hold elections within eight months.
But the revolutionary forces are an unruly mix of militias from Libya’s major cities, and already differences have emerged between them. Revolutionaries from Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi — Libya’s second-largest city that has served as the rebel capital during the civil war — have exchanged accusations that each is trying to dominate the new rule.
Also, Islamic fundamentalists have taken an increasingly prominent role, pushing for some form of Islamic state in Libya, causing friction with more secular leaders.
Arab Spring movement
Arab leaders who have been toppled in recent months or are clinging to power:
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia: The former president fled to Saudi Arabia in January after weeks of protests against his regime; tried in absentia in his homeland.
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt: The former president is on trial after resigning in February, days after vowing to remain in office. Mubarak’s ouster followed the army’s refusal to fire on civilians after weeks of demonstrations.
Moammar Gadhafi, Libya: Driven into hiding as rebel forces took the capital, Tripoli, in August; killed Thursday in his hometown, Sirte.
Bashar Assad, Syria: Remains in power despite continuing pressure.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen: Remains in power amid talks on his exit.
