Libya’s new leaders have promised that the 69-year-old Moammar Gadhafi will be buried this Friday in an Islamic traditions in a Sirte cemetery, denying reports that he would be buried in a secret grave, National Transitional Council member, Mohamed Sayeh reported.
The Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam also confirmed this. “He will be buried Friday according to Islamic custom.”
The reports from Libya say Gadhafi was shot to death in his hometown of Sirte, where revolutionary fighters overwhelmed the last of his loyalist supporters Thursday after weeks of heavy battles.
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.
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 that eventually ousted Gadhafi, as crowds in the streets cheered.
Also killed in Sirte was one of Gadhafi’s feared sons, Muatassim, while another son — one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam — was wounded and captured. An AP reporter saw cigarette burns on Muatassim’s body.
The governing National Transitional Council said interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil will formally declare liberation on Saturday in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolution against Gadhafi’s rule began in mid-February.
The NTC has always said it will form a new interim government within a month of liberation and will hold elections within eight months.
Reports also say that the President Barack Obama told the Libyan people after the fall of Gadhafi; “You have won your revolution.”
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