MISURATA, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s last moments Thursday were as violent as the uprising that overthrew him.
In a cellphone video that went viral on the Internet, the deposed(废黜, 罢免) Libyan leader is seen splayed(展开, 张开) on the hood(引擎罩) of a truck and then stumbling(蹒跚) amid a frenzied(狂热的, 激怒的) crowd, seemingly begging for mercy. He is next seen on the ground, with fighters grabbing his hair. Blood pours down his head, drenching(湿透) his golden brown khakis(卡其布), as the crowd shouts, “God is great!”
Colonel Qaddafi’s body was shown in later photographs, with bullet holes apparently fired into his head at what forensic experts said was close range, raising the possibility that he was executed at the hands of anti-Qaddafi fighters.
The official version of events offered by Libya’s new leaders — that Colonel Qaddafi was killed in a cross-fire — was not supported by the photographs and videos that streamed over the Internet all day long, raising questions about the government’s control of the militias(民兵) in a country that has been divided into competing regions and factions(派别).
The conflicting accounts about how he was killed seemed to reflect an instability that could consume Libya long after the euphoria(心情愉快，情绪高亢) fades about the demise(死亡) of Colonel Qaddafi.
For weeks, as the fight for Surt, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown and final redoubt(防守阵地, 安全的退避处) in the eight-month conflict, reached a bloody climax, NATO forces and Libyan fighters had watched for an attempt by loyalists of Colonel Qaddafi’s to flee and seek safety elsewhere. Soon after dawn, they did, leaving urban bunkers(掩蔽壕,地堡) in the Mediterranean town and heading west, said a senior Western official in Europe knowledgeable about NATO’s operations in Libya.
Around 8:30 a.m. local time, a convoy(护送部队) slipped out of a fortified(加强的) compound in Surt, the scene of one f the Libyan civil war’s bloodiest and longest battles and a city that was on the verge of falling to Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents.
Before the convoy had traveled two miles, NATO officials said, it was set upon by an American Predator drone(掠夺者无人侦察机) and a French warplane. With the attack the convoy “was stopped from progressing as it sought to flee Surt but was not destroyed,” Defense Minister Gérard Longuet of France said.
Only two vehicles in the convoy were hit, neither carrying Colonel Qaddafi, a Western official said. But the rest of the convoy was forced to detour(绕路) and scatter(散开). Anti-Qaddafi fighters rapidly descended(袭击) on the scene, telling Reuters they saw people fleeing through some nearby woods and gave pursuit.
A field leader in Surt, who gave his name to Al Jazeera television as Mohammed al-Laith, said that Colonel Qaddafi fled from a Jeep in the convoy and dived into a large drainage pipe(排水). After a gun battle backed by his guards, he emerged, wearing military-style khakis. Mr. Laith told Al Jazeera that the former Libyan leader had a Kalashnikov(卡拉什尼科夫冲锋枪) in one hand, a pistol(手枪) in the other.
“What’s happening?” he quoted him asking as he came out.
The video on Al Jazeera shows Colonel Qaddafi wounded, but clearly alive. The network quoted a fighter saying that he begged for help. “Show me mercy,” he was said to have cried. There was little of that, in the video at least.
One fighter is seen pulling his hair, and others beat his limp(软弱的) body. Two fighters interviewed by Al Jazeera said that someone struck the colonel’s head with a gun butt.
Omran Shaaban, 21, a Misurata fighter who claimed to have been the first to find Colonel Qaddafi, says he was already wounded in the leg and chest and bleeding in the drainage pipe and then whisked away to an ambulance. Precisely how he died after that, Mr. Shaaban said, was unclear.
By all accounts, he was then taken in an ambulance to Misurata, a coastal town to the west that fought perhaps the most ferocious battle against Colonel Qaddafi’s government and whose fighters still celebrate their reputation for martial prowess.
Holly Pickett, a freelance photojournalist working in Surt, reported in a Twitter feed that she had seen Colonel Qaddafi’s body in an ambulance headed for Misurata, along with 10 fighters inside with him. It was unclear from her posting whether he was dead. “From the side door, I could see a bare chest with bullet wound and a bloody hand. He was wearing gold-colored pants,” she said in one Twitter post.
Within an hour of the news of Colonel Qaddafi’s death, Libyans were celebrating the former leader’s demise. “We have been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister of the Transitional National Council, the interim government, said. “Muammar Qaddafi is dead.” He was speaking at a news conference in Tripoli. Mahmoud Shammam, the council’s chief spokesman, called it “the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems God has some other wish."