The body of
Muammar Gaddafi was paraded through the streets hours after he was captured hiding in a drainage pipe in his hometown.
Jubilant rebels used a vehicle to carry the dead dictator through Misrata, the town where hundreds of protesters were slaughtered at the start of the rebellion.
PICTURES:See photos of graffiti depicting Col Gaddafi’s demise
Hours earlier the 69-year-old former leader was found cowering in a concrete pipe in his hometown of Sirte and begged not to be shot when he was found by National Transitional Council troops.
Gruesome images emerged showing the ousted dictator being dragged through the streets, bloody but apparently still alive.
He is seen in a blood-soaked shirt with a bloodied face, standing upright and shoved along a crowd of fighters at a roadside.
Gaddafi appeared to struggle against them, stumbling and shouting as they pushed him on to the bonnet of a truck.
A man was heard shouting, ‘We want him alive,’ before the despot was dragged away towards an ambulance.
Later footage showed his apparently lifeless body being rolled over on the pavement and stripped to the waist with a pool of blood under his head. A doctor said Gaddafi died from two bullet wounds to the head and chest.
His death came almost exactly two months after rebel forces effectively ended his 42-year rule by sweeping into Tripoli and forcing him from his huge compound.
Rumours about his whereabouts followed, including claims that he was hiding in a vast underground network of tunnels beneath the capital, but he was finally captured and killed in the Mediterranean town where he was born in a tent in 1942.
Thursday’s developments were said to have started when Gaddafi and a few dozen loyal bodyguards tried to break out of Sirte.
They escaped an air strike on their convoy and hid in two concrete drainage pipes, with government forces on their tail, according to one account.
Libya’s transitional authorities plan to bury Gaddafi in a secret location, according to Al-Arabiya TV.
PICTURES:See more photos from the day Col Gaddafi was killed in Libya
