AFP in scoop with bloodied Gadhafi image

NICOSIA—Agence France-Presse was the first international media on Thursday to file an image of a heavily bloodied Moammar Gadhafi after the fall of his Sirte hometown.

The shot was taken from the mobile phone of an anti-Gadhafi fighter by photographer Philippe Desmazes in the eastern Libyan city.

“I was covering the fall of Sirte when I heard gunfire some distance west of where I stood,” said Desmazes, adding that it sounded like a celebration rather than fighting.

“I asked the fighters to take me there, and when we reached the site they showed me huge cement culverts in which, they said, Gadhafi had been hiding before his capture.”

Desmazes said his lucky break came when he noticed another group of fighters nearby, eyes fixed on a mobile phone and decided to join them.

“I was lucky because I was the only one to notice them,” he said. “The owner of the cell phone showed me (a video of) the arrest of Gadhafi which he had taken a few minutes earlier.

“The light at that time made it difficult to take a picture of the screen,” he said.

But the fighters crowded around Desmazes providing him with enough shadow to snap the picture. “The fighters moved closer and created a shadow enabling me to take a picture … I was very lucky.”

In the grainy image, Gadhafi is seen with bloodsoaked clothing and blood daubed across his face.

Initially AFP was unable to determine if the man was indeed Gadhafi. Less than an hour later a spokesman of Libya’s new regime, the National Transitional Council, confirmed Gadhafi had died in the custody of its fighters.

By then the picture by Desmazes, who is based in Lyons, southeast France, and covered the civil war in the Ivory Coast, was already all over the Internet and satellite news channels.