Whereabouts of Moammar Gadhafi still unknown

“DANGER is still here,” says a rebel leader, as long as Gadhafi is on the run. AP File Photo

TRIPOLI, Libya—Tanks opened fire at rebels trying to storm Moammar Gadhafi’s main compound in Tripoli on Monday, although the whereabouts of the longtime Libyan leader remained unknown a day after a lightning advance by opposition fighters on the capital.

The international community called on Gadhafi to step down as euphoric residents celebrated in the Green Square, the symbolic heart of his 41-year regime. Nato promised to continue air strikes until all pro-Gadhafi forces surrender or return to barracks.

Rebel spokesperson Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, who was in Tripoli, cautioned that pockets of resistance remained and that as long as Gadhafi remains on the run the “danger is still there.”

The clashes broke out early Monday at Gadhafi’s longtime command center known as Bab al-Aziziya early Monday when government tanks emerged from the complex and opened fire at rebels trying to get in, according to Abdel-Rahman and a neighbor.

An Associated Press reporter at the nearby Rixos Hotel where foreign journalists stay could hear gunfire and loud explosions from the direction of the complex.

Tripoli resident Moammar al-Warfali, whose family home is next to the compound, said there appeared to be only a few tanks belonging to the remaining Gadhafi forces that have not fled or surrendered.

“When I climb the stairs and look at it from the roof, I see nothing at Bab al-Aziziya,” he said. “Nato has demolished it all and nothing remains.”

The Rixos also remained under the control of Gadhafi forces, with two trucks loaded with antiaircraft machine guns and proregime fighters and snipers posted behind trees. Rebels and Tripoli residents set up checkpoints elsewhere in the city.

The rebels’ top diplomat in London, Mahmud Nacua, said clashes were continuing in Tripoli, but opposition forces controlled 95 percent of the city.

He vowed Gadhafi would be found, saying “the fighters will turn over every stone to find him” and make sure he faced justice.

State TV broadcast bitter audio pleas by Gadhafi for Libyans to defend his regime.

‘It’s over, frizz-head’

Opposition fighters captured Gadhafi’s son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, who along with his father faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands. Another son, Mohammed, was under house arrest.

Libyan rebels are negotiating with the ICC to arrange the handover of Seif al-Islam who was detained late on Sunday, al Arabiya TV reported on Monday without naming a source.

“It’s over, frizz-head,” hundreds of jubilant men and women massed in Green Square late Sunday chanted, using a mocking nickname of the curly-haired Gadhafi.

The revelers fired shots in the air, clapped and waved the rebels’ tricolor flag. Some set fire to the green flag of Gadhafi’s regime and shot holes in a poster with the leader’s image.

But Gadhafi’s defiance in a series of angry audio messages raised the possibility of a last-ditch fight over the capital, home to 2 million people.

Gadhafi, who was not shown in the messages, called on his supporters to march in the streets of the capital and “purify it” of “the rats.”

Government spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim also claimed the regime has “thousands and thousands of fighters” and vowed: “We will fight. We have whole cities on our sides. They are coming en masse to protect Tripoli to join the fight.”

No surrender

Gadhafi’s former right-hand man, who defected last week to Italy, said the longtime leader would not go easily.

“I think it’s impossible that he’ll surrender,” Abdel-Salam Jalloud said in an interview broadcast on Italian RAI state radio, adding that “he doesn’t have the courage, like Hitler, to kill himself.”

Jalloud, who was Gadhafi’s closest aide for decades before falling out with the leader in the 1990s, fled Tripoli on Friday, according to rebels.

The startling rebel breakthrough, after a long deadlock in Libya’s 6-month-old civil war, was the culmination of a closely coordinated plan by rebels, Nato and anti-Gadhafi residents inside Tripoli, rebel leaders said.

Rebel fighters from the west swept over 30 kilometers in a matter of hours on Sunday, taking town after town and overwhelming a major military base as residents poured out to cheer them. At the same time, Tripoli residents secretly armed by rebels rose up.

When rebels reached the gates of Tripoli, the special battalion entrusted by Gadhafi with guarding the capital promptly surrendered. The reason: Its commander, whose brother had been executed by Gadhafi years ago, was secretly loyal to the rebellion, a senior rebel official, Fathi al-Baja, told The Associated Press.

Arab spring

The uprising against Gadhafi broke out in mid-February, inspired by successful revolts in Egypt and Tunisia. A brutal regime crackdown quickly transformed the protests into an armed rebellion.

Rebels seized Libya’s east, setting up an internationally recognized transitional government there, and two pockets in the west, the port city of Misrata and the Nafusa mountain range.

In early August, however, rebels launched an offensive from the Nafusa Mountains, then fought their way down to the Mediterranean coastal plain, backed by Nato air strikes, and captured the strategic city of Zawiya.

The rebels’ leadership council, based in the eastern city of Benghazi, sent out mobile text messages to Tripoli residents, proclaiming, “Long live Free Libya” and urging them to protect public property. Internet service returned to the capital for the first time in six months.

Gadhafi is the Arab world’s longest-ruling, most erratic, most grimly fascinating leader—presiding over this North African desert nation with vast oil reserves and just 6 million people.

For years, he was an international pariah blamed for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

After years of denial, Gadhafi’s Libya acknowledged responsibility, agreed to pay up to $10 million to relatives of each victim, and the Libyan rule declared he would dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program. That eased him back into the international community.

No succession plans

A senior US military officer who has been in contact with African and Arab military leaders in recent days, expressed caution on Sunday about the prospects for Libya even if the Gadhafi government should fall.

Even if Gadhafi is deposed in some way, the senior officer said, there was still no clear plan for a political succession or for maintaining security in the country.

US officials say they are preparing contingency plans if and when Gadhafi’s government falls to help prevent the vast Libyan government stockpiles of weapons, particularly portable antiaircraft missiles, from being stolen and dispersed.

Untold numbers of the missiles, including SA-7’s, have already been looted from government arsenals, and US officials fear they could circulate widely, including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian airliners.

“What I worry about most is the proliferation of these weapons,” the senior military officer said.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy will call the executive head of Libya’s rebel National Transitional Council on Monday and meet him in Paris in the coming days, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters.

France was the first world power to recognize the NTC as the voice of Libya, and Sarkozy’s government has close contacts with Mahmud Jibril, in effect the prime minister of the Benghazi-based revolutionary group.

“The president will today hold a conversation with the president of the CNT executive council, Mr Jibril, whom he should also meet—we hope—in the next few days in Paris,” Juppe said. Reports from AP, Reuters, AFP and New York Times News Service