Tripoli: Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the longest serving leader of Arab world, was shot and killed by the rebels on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte after weeks of heavy fighting.
Gaddafi died of his wounds after being captured from a hole where he had been hiding. He breathed his last when he was being transported.
The former Libyan dictator was reportedly found cowering in a hole in the ground at the centre of Sirte, after rebels moved through the seaside town during their final assault.
Fighter Mohammed Al Bibi told that the toppled tyrant had pleaded 'Don't shoot, don't shoot' as he attempted to surrender.
National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told that Gaddafi was hit in his head. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died,” said Mlegta. Read: When Gaddafi said Kashmir must be separated from India!
He said Gaddafi was gunned down as he tried to escape, while another fighter said the dictator had been hit in the stomach at least once with a 9mm bullet.
Rebels told that Gaddafi was armed with a golden handgun and was wearing a khaki uniform.
Gaddafi and his family have been on the run since NATO and rebel forces started closing the net on Tripoli in mid-August.
The reports of Gaddafi's killing came on the same day when revolutionary forces took control of Sirte.
It is understood that Gaddafi’s son Saif has also been captured by rebels. There were some reports that NATO had bombed a compound shortly before Gaddafi’s reported capture.
Gaddafi's killing is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia, and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.
His capture followed within minutes of the fall of Sirte, a development that extinguished the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the deposed leader.
The capture of Sirte and the death of Gaddafi means Libya's ruling NTC should now begin the task of forging a new democratic system which it had said it would get under way after the city, built as a showpiece for Gaddafi's rule, had fallen.
Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on 23 August after 42 years of one-man rule over the oil-producing North African state.
NTC fighters hoisted the red, black and green national flag above a large utilities building in the centre of a newly-captured Sirte neighbourhood and celebratory gunfire broke out among their ecstatic and relieved comrades.
Hundreds of NTC troops had surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town for weeks in a chaotic struggle that killed and wounded scores of the besieging forces and an unknown number of defenders.
NTC fighters said there were a large number of corpses inside the last redoubts of the Gaddafi troops.
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