A beleaguered Muammar Gaddafi vowed on Wednesday to fight on to death or victory after jubilant rebels forced him to abandon his Tripoli stronghold in an apparently decisive blow against the Libyan leader’s 42-year rule.
Rebels ransacked Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya bastion, seizing arms and smashing symbols of a ruler whose fall will transform Libya and rattle other Arab autocrats facing popular uprisings. Gaddafi said the withdrawal from his headquarters in the heart of the capital was a tactical move after it had been hit by 64 NATO air strikes and he vowed “martyrdom” or victory in his six-month war against the Western alliance and Libyan foes.
Urging Libyans to cleanse the streets of traitors, he said he had secretly toured Tripoli.
“I have been out a bit in Tripoli discreetly, without being seen by people, and ... I did not feel that Tripoli was in danger,” Gaddafi told loyalist media outlets.
His whereabouts after leaving the compound, perhaps via a tunnel network to adjoining districts, remain unknown, although he appears to have been in Tripoli, at least until recently.
Rebels said fighting was still going on near the Rixos hotel, where armed Gaddafi loyalists have prevented foreign journalists from leaving, and in eastern areas of the city.
A Reuters reporter near the hotel around midday (6 am EDT) on Wednesday heard rifle fire and heavy anti-aircraft guns, which have been used by both sides against ground targets.
Earlier in the morning, a Reuters reporter inside the hotel, Missy Ryan, said food and water were running low. Pro-Gaddafi gunmen who had patrolled the hotel compound were no longer in sight, she said, but it was not clear if they had withdrawn.
Residents remained fearful, with empty streets, shuttered shops and piles of garbage testifying that life is still far from normal in the city of 2 million. Rebels manned checkpoints along the main thoroughfare into the city from the west.
People were defacing or erasing Gaddafi portraits and other symbols in a city where they were once ubiquitous. They painted over street names and renamed them for rebel fighters who had become “martyrs.” Plaques were torn off government offices.
“There are some fights going but hopefully today everything will be over,” one rebel fighter said.
Fighting was reported on Tuesday night in a southern desert city, Sabha, that rebels forecast would be Gaddafi loyalists’ last redoubt. Pro-Gaddafi forces were shelling the towns of Zuara and Ajelat, west of Tripoli, Al-Arabiya TV said.
Omar al-Ghirani, a rebel spokesman, said loyalist forces had fired seven Grad missiles at residential areas of the capital, causing people to flee their homes in panic.
He told Reuters Gaddafi troops had also fired mortar rounds in the area of the Tripoli airport.
“VOLCANO OF LAVA”
The continued shooting suggested the six-month popular insurgency against Gaddafi, a maverick Arab nationalist who defied the West and kept an iron hand on his oil-exporting, country for four decades, has not completely triumphed yet.
A spokesman for Gaddafi said the Libyan leader was ready to resist the rebels for months, or even years.
“We will turn Libya into a volcano of lava and fire under the feet of the invaders and their treacherous agents,” Moussa Ibrahim said, speaking by telephone to pro-Gaddafi channels.
Rebel leaders would not enjoy peace if they carried out their plans to move to Tripoli from their headquarters in the eastern city of Benghazi, he said.
But Gaddafi was already history in the eyes of the rebels and their political leaders planned high-level talks in Qatar on Wednesday with envoys of the United States, Britain, France, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the way ahead.
