Battles in Tripoli as Rebels Offer $1.7 Mln for Gadhafi's Head
Libyan rebels put a price of two million dinars ($1.67 million, 1.2 million euros) on the head of strongman Moammar Gadhafi, dead or alive, the head of the National Transitional Council said on Wednesday, as battles rocked the capital Tripoli.
"The NTC supports the initiative of businessmen who are offering two million dinars for the capture of Moammar Gadhafi, dead or alive," Mustafa Abdul Jalil said in Tripoli.
Also, Abdul Jalil offered amnesty to "members of (Gadhafi's) close circle who kill him or capture him."
Fighting raged Wednesday near Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound a day after it was captured by rebels, while loyalist troops staged a fightback and the strongman boasted he went walkabout.
Thick smoke hung over the Bab al-Aziziya complex, where rebels and Gadhafi's forces were fighting early afternoon with light weapons, heavy machineguns, rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and mortars, an Agence France Presse reporter said.
Fighting also spread to the nearby Abu Slim area, where loyalist troops were on the attack, in marked contrast to Tuesday's battle for Bab al-Aziziya when they fled as the rebels breached the gates.
Rebel commanders said however they were determined to push the loyalist troops out of the area, which houses the Rixos hotel where around 30 foreign journalists remain trapped.
Many streets were deserted in the city center, with commanders saying dozens of pro-Gadhafi snipers have taken up positions.
"There are snipers above and around the perimeter of Bab al-Aziziya; there are dozens of them but we don't know where they are," said the chief of a rebel group, Nouri Mohammed.
Two powerful blasts thought to be caused by an air attack rocked the capital early Wednesday as a NATO warplane flew overhead.
The whereabouts of the strongman himself and his family remained a mystery on Wednesday.
Rebel fighters said they had found no trace of Gadhafi when they swarmed through his compound on Tuesday, raiding his armory, raising their flag and ripping the head off a statue of the strongman.
"Bab al-Aziziya is fully under our control now. Colonel Gadhafi and his sons were not there; there is nobody," said military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Bani "No one knows where they are."
Wherever he may indeed be, the strongman is still managing to get his messages out.
In a speech carried early Wednesday by the website of a television station headed by his son Seif al-Islam, he said he had abandoned his compound in a "tactical withdrawal" after it had been wrecked by NATO warplanes.
"Bab al-Aziziya was nothing but a heap of rubble after it was the target of 64 NATO missiles and we withdrew from it for tactical reasons," he said.
The speech gave no indication of where he had gone.
In a later audio message on Syria-based Arrai Oruba television station, Gadhafi boasted that he had taken to the streets of Tripoli without being recognized.
"I walked incognito, without anyone seeing me, and I saw youths ready to defend their city," the strongman said, without specifying when he did his walkabout.
He also urged "the residents, the tribes, the elderly to go into the streets ... and cleanse Tripoli of rats" -- referring to the rebels.
Gadhafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed to the Arrai Oruba channel that more than 6,500 "volunteers" had arrived in Tripoli to fight for the regime, and called for more.
Insurgents, jumpy but jubilant and armed with assault rifles, combed the streets of the capital Wednesday for remnants of the regime.
"We are the champions. We've been dying for 42 years and now we are going to live," said Sharif Sohail, a 34-year-old dentist who took up arms to patrol the city center.
Other rebel fighters, some wrapped in Free Libya flags, some wearing flackjackets, manned checkpoints through the night, scrutinizing traffic by flashlight in neighborhoods without electricity.
"We are checking every car that passes," Ibrahim Mukhtar, 27, told Agence France Presse at a main intersection near Souk al-Fatah. "We are guarding the streets."
The attack on Gadhafi's headquarters followed three days of fighting in the capital which NTC chief Abdul Jalil said had left more than 400 killed and 2,000 wounded.
He did not specify if he was talking of both sides.
Not far from Wednesday's fighting, some 30 foreign journalists were still unable to leave their hotel after four days of siege.
"It's getting pretty miserable here and you can only imagine the sort of tension which the foreigners here, the journalists here, find themselves feeling at the moment," BBC correspondent Matthew Price told BBC radio.
Wednesday morning, some of the journalists attempted to venture a few meters from the hotel before gunfire erupted nearby and armed men ordered them to return to the Rixos.
Electricity, temporarily cut, has been restored, but water remains scarce. Mobile phone signals are poor and food is in short supply.
Source: Agence France Presse
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