Moammar Gadhafi Is Dead, Libya's Prime Minister Says
Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images(TRIPOLI, Libya) -- Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril confirmed Thursday.
The flamboyant tyrant who terrorized his country and much of the world during his 42 years of despotic rule was reportedly cornered by insurgents in the town of Sirte, where Gadhafi was born and which was a stronghold of his supporters.
President Obama will make remarks this afternoon confirming and discussing Gadhafi's death.
National Transition Council leaders said Gadhafi's son, Motassim, was also killed, though another son, Saif Al-Islam, fled Sirte in a convoy. Three of Gadhafi's children are in Algeria, and NTC leaders say they will ask the neighboring country to send them back.
"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Jibril said at a news conference in Tripoli.
He added that the rebel government will wait until later Thursday or Friday to officially declare what it calls a state of liberation.
The National Transition Council earlier Thursday said that its fighters found and shot Gadhafi in Sirte, which finally fell to the rebels after weeks of tough fighting. Rebels now control the entire country.
An NTC fighter who says he shot Gadhafi told reporters the eccentric leader was carrying a golden pistol and pleaded to him not to shoot. Footage of the dictator apparently badly wounded, being pulled from a pickup truck by a throng of cheering men -- and later dead sometime later -- quickly made its way to Al Jazeera and other networks and around the world.
Word of Gadhafi's death triggered celebrations in the streets of Tripoli with insurgent fighters waving their weapons and dancing jubilantly.
The White House and NATO said they were unable to confirm reports of his death.
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