THE REBELS’ pickup careered around the wide plaza that used to be known as Green Square before screeching to a stop next to a half-completed stand from where Muammar Gadafy had planned to deliver public speeches.
Many of the dusty fighters crammed into the back of the graffitied vehicle were fresh from clashes with Gadafy loyalists in the Abu Salim area of Tripoli, home to the notorious prison of the same name, where political dissidents had long been incarcerated.
Rebel commanders yesterday claimed it was one of the last pockets of the city where forces loyal to Col Gadafy were still holding out.
“Raise your head up high – you are a free Libyan,” the rebels chanted, as cheering bystanders sang along. The air rang with the sound of gunfire as the fighters, some just out of their teens, shot into the sky in celebration. Others yelled the names of the “martyrs” who had been killed in recent days, prompting shouts of Allahu Akbar.
“Give us two days, and it will be all over,” said Firaj Bulifa, who had taken part in the storming of Col Gadafy’s compound, Bab al-Azizia, earlier this week. The rebels continued to hold the complex yesterday despite heavy bombardment by regime forces. “It is very bad there today, but we will prevail,” he added.
What is now referred to as Midan Shuhada or Martyrs Square was littered with spent cartridges and the burnt remains of the plain green standard that Col Gadafy declared as Libya’s national flag in the 1970s.
Several families had gathered at the square, where Col Gadafy had tried to muster rallies in the dying days of his rule, to marvel at how their city had changed in a matter of days, and how the regime they loathed was all but gone.
“It still feels unreal because it happened so quickly in the end,” said Fawzia Hajjai, as she walked around with her wide-eyed young son Khalil. “I never expected this day would come. Only six months ago, we would not even have dared to dream of this. All of us are revolutionaries now. All I can think of is the new Libya we are going to build for our children.”
Col Gadafy’s green standard was nowhere to be seen during a drive across the city, from its western hinterland to its eastern reaches. Instead the black, red and green flag of pre-Gadafy Libya, which the rebels have adopted as their own, fluttered from cars, homes and the few shops that remained open.
Walls were daubed with graffiti commemorating February 17th, the date of the first protests that soon tipped Libya into violent revolt against Col Gadafy’s 42-year-old regime, or mocking Col Gadafy with crude caricatures that could have landed those responsible in prison just days ago.
A huge mural of Col Gadafy on the side of one building was pocked with bullet holes. Government buildings, including the state TV complex and the oil ministry, were abandoned. Nothing had been torched or looted. Some rebel volunteers were sealing off the entrance to an intelligence services base which had been pulverised in a Nato air strike.
At one checkpoint, gun-toting young rebels in T-shirts and jeans handed out a pamphlet to passing motorists. Signed by “The Ladies of the February 17 revolution”, it addressed “free Libyans”, urging them to return to work, reopen shops and businesses and not to raise food prices. “Now we have the victory we were waiting so long for,” it read. “We must help one another in order to progress to the next stage. Please work to prevent us losing our freedom again.”
Bab al-Azizia compound came under heavy fire from the pro-Gadafy area of Abu Salim and the woods near the city zoo, which rebels said were “infested” with snipers.
Gadafy loyalists, who the rebels said were mostly Arab mercenaries, also fired on the road leading to Tripoli airport. Rebels said 400 people had been killed and 2,000 injured in the battle for Tripoli so far.
Rebel columns closed in on the coastal city of Sirte, Col Gadafy’s birthplace.
It was unclear whether the fighting was a desperate last stand or the start of a guerrilla campaign by a “stay-behind” force, modelled on the tactics Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants used in Iraq in 2003.
A pro-Gadafy radio station broadcast statements by the deposed leader claiming he had “discreetly” toured the capital and “did not feel that Tripoli was in danger”. He reportedly said the retreat from his compound had been a tactical move and vowed to fight to the death, calling on his supporters to “cleanse” Tripoli of “devils and traitors”.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the opposition National Transitional Council, announced a reward for Col Gadafy’s capture of two million Libyan dinars ($1.3 million) and an amnesty for past crimes for anyone in his entourage who killed or detained him.
About 35 journalists and diplomats were freed from the Rixos hotel on the edge of Abu Salim, where they had been held for five days by pro-Gadafy gunmen, but four Italian journalists were abducted on their way from Zawiya to Tripoli. – (Additional reporting: Guardianservice)