Gadhafi: Victory or death!

FLEETING GLORY. A rebel fighter points his rifle at the fallen head of a statue of Gadhafi inside his fortified compound in Bab al-Aziziya in Tripoli on Tuesday. The strongman ruled for 42 years. AP

Tripoli, Libya—A defiant Moammar Gadhafi vowed on Wednesday to fight on “until victory or martyrdom,” as rebel fighters tried to end scattered attacks by regime loyalists in the nervous capital.

The rebels say they have now taken control of nearly all of Tripoli, but sporadic gunfire could still be heard on Wednesday, and Gadhafi loyalists fired shells and assault rifles at fighters who had captured the Libyan leader’s personal compound one day earlier.

Rebel leaders, meanwhile, made their first moves to set up a new government in the capital. During Libya’s six-month civil war, opposition leaders had established their interim administration, the National Transitional Council, in the eastern city of Benghazi, which fell under rebel control shortly after the outbreak of widespread antiregime protests in February.

“Members of the council are now moving one by one from Benghazi to Tripoli,” said Mansour Seyf al-Nasr, the Libyan opposition’s new ambassador to France. He said that Tripoli is “secure and our guys are checking all the areas.”

The deputy rebel chief, Mahmoud Jibril, was to meet later on Wednesday with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of the Libyan opposition, along with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

In an address from an unknown location and broadcast on the local Al-Ouroba TV, Gadhafi asked: “Why are you letting them wreak havoc?”

Sounding subdued and without his usually fiery rhetoric, Gadhafi said he would fight “the aggression with all strength until either victory or death.”

64 Nato air strikes

The pro-Gadhafi TV channel earlier quoted the Libyan leader as saying he had left the Bab al-Aziziya compound in a “tactical move” after 64 Nato air strikes reduced it to rubble.

Tuesday’s ransacking of Bab al-Aziziya, long the nexus of Gadhafi’s power, marked the effective collapse of his 42-year-old regime.

But with Gadhafi and his powerful sons still unaccounted for—and gun battles flaring across the nervous city—the fighters cannot declare victory.

Gadhafi’s chief government spokesperson, Moussa Ibrahim, also managed to get word out in a phone interview with the same station, promising “we will be back to take Tripoli back.”

Gadhafi has routinely addressed his supporters from state Libyan television, but the rebels have taken the channel off the air on Tuesday.

Celebration, tension

The rebel force entered the compound on Tuesday after fighting for five hours with Gadhafi loyalists, using mortars, heavy machine guns and antiaircraft guns.

The rebels killed some of those who defended the compound and hauled off thousands of rifles, crates of weapons and trucks with guns mounted on the back in a frenzy of looting.

Tripoli’s new rebel military chief, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, said at nightfall that a small area of the vast compound was still under the control of regime fighters and heavy shooting was heard across Tripoli toward midnight.

The atmosphere in the compound was a mix of joyful celebration and tension. The air was thick with smoke from the battles, and the boom of mortars and the crackle of gunfire was constant. Rebels chanted “Allahu akbar” or “God is great” and on loudspeakers they cried: “Al-Hamdullilah,” or “Thank God.”

The storming of the compound represented the fruition of an oft-repeated rebel vow: “We will celebrate in Bab al-Aziziya,” the ultimate seat of power in the Gadhafi government. The conquest was spearheaded by hundreds of experienced fighters from the port city of Misrata, who developed into some of the rebels’ best organized and most effective units after months of bitter fighting with elite loyalist forces.

No unified command

Jubilant rebel fighters made off with advanced machine guns, a gold-plated rifle and Gadhafi’s golf cart. One took the distinctive fur that Gadhafi wore in his first public appearance after the uprising began six months ago.

While the pillaging of Bab al-Aziziya was the most conclusive evidence yet that Gadhafi’s rule was at an end, it was not yet clear how much his fall would do to pacify Gadhafi partisans who may feel they have much to lose from the rebels’ ascendance, especially while their leader remains at large.

Rebel leaders on Tuesday acknowledged that their forces in Tripoli are not under any unified command. Some are simply Tripoli residents who have taken up guns, and have little or no military experience.

And rebels from the western mountains fight in independent brigades from each town or tribe, spraying its name—“Zintan” or “Nalut”—as they go.

Journalists trapped

Rebel military commanders said that aside from the area around Bab al-Aziziya, they believed that only two other neighborhoods of Tripoli remained under the control of Gadhafi loyalists.

One is Al Hadba. The other is Abu Salim, which includes the Rixos Hotel. A group of journalists have been trapped there for days, first by Gadhafi’s guards and now by gunfire outside.

On Tuesday, the BBC reported that the hotel had come under attack as well, forcing the journalists to take shelter.

But gunmen and snipers hostile to the rebels continue to operate in many other neighborhoods, and doctors at clinics and hospitals around Tripoli reported hundreds of gunshot wounds over the last 72 hours, even in neighborhoods rebels consider well controlled.

The death toll was impossible to assess. Doctors at a small clinic in the relatively safe neighborhood of Jansur reported receiving 30 patients injured in the fighting, 6 of whom died overnight.

It is also unclear how many rebel fighters are in Tripoli, in part because so many young men from the city are now brandishing automatic rifles.

The rebels from the western mountains number a few thousand in tribal bands of 600 or more, and the Misrata fighters were said in unconfirmed reports to number around 500.

Gadhafi sons

Rebel leaders struggled to explain how their leaders in the eastern city of Benghazi misled the world two days ago when they falsely reported the capture of Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam, one of the most powerful figures in his father’s government.

Gadhafi’s son embarrassed the rebels early Tuesday by walking freely into the Rixos Hotel and boasting that his father was still in control and inside the city.

In a news conference in the Qatari capital, Doha, Mahmoud Jabril, a top rebel leader, said it was essentially a misunderstanding, suggesting that Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, had mistaken an early notification of an unconfirmed rumor for an official report of Seif al-Islam’s capture. There was no explanation why the misunderstanding went uncorrected for two days.

The rebels’ reversal about the Gadhafi son’s capture led to some finger-pointing among the rebels. “I learned not to trust the people from Benghazi who are telling me these stories,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the western mountains who had repeated the news on Monday.

As for the reported capture of another Gadhafi son, Mohammed, Fekini confirmed reports that he had escaped and acknowledged some responsibility. Mohammed had played little role in the Gadhafi political machine, so Fekini said he and others agreed to place him under house arrest.

“Unfortunately it was naïve,” he said. “We are too humane to be warriors.”

Not far from Tripoli

Rebel officials and others close to Gadhafi both said on Tuesday that they believed that he had not gone far.

“We believe that he is either in Tripoli or close to Tripoli,” Guma el-Gamaty, a spokesperson for the rebels leadership, told BBC television. “Sooner or later he will be found alive and arrested—and hopefully that is the best outcome we want—or if he resists, he will be killed.”

In addition to Seif al-Islam’s boast about his father, Russian news agencies reported earlier that Gadhafi had a telephone conversation with the Russian head of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, who is in Gadhafi’s circle of foreign friends. Gadhafi had told his chess mate that he was alive and well in Tripoli, Ilyumzhinov reportedly said. Reports from AP and New York Times News Service