Former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been confirmed dead after reportedly succumbing to wounds following his capture near his hometown of Sirte after fierce fighting.
"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital city Tripoli. "Moammar Gadhafi has been killed."
Unconfirmed reports from fighters for the transitional government celebrating in Sirte said that Gadhafi was found in a culvert, wearing a uniform and carrying a golden pistol. Most news accounts seemed to agree that the former dictator was shot to death.
According to the Associated Press, the fighters believed to have killed Gadhafi were from Misrata, which endured a brutal siege by the dictator's forces for weeks during the civil war. Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor on the medical team that accompanied the body in the ambulance to Misrata, told the news agency that he died from two bullet wounds to the head and chest.
The World Reacts
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told news agency Reuters that the former dictator's death marked an "historic transition for Libya."
"This day marks the final moment for the Gadhafi regime," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday evening in Berlin. "With this a bloody war Gadhafi waged on his own people has come to an end. The way is finally free for a peaceful new political beginning."
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle pointed to German efforts already underway to help Libyans reconstruct their country, citing the example of more than 40 wounded fighters recently brought to Germany for medical treatment. As a dictator, Gadhafi had "violated human rights and waged a bloody war against his own people," he added.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who pushed for military intervention in the country, said the democratic process could now begin in Libya. "The liberation of Sirte must signal ... the start of a process agreed by the CNT (National Transitional Council) to establish a democratic system in which all groups in the country have their place and where fundamental freedoms are guaranteed," he said in a statement.
Sarkozy's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe also commented in the dictator's death. "It is the beginning of a new era, the beginning of democracy and reconstruction in Libya," he told reporters during a visit to New Delhi, India.
In Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy issued a joint statement on the development. "The reported death of Moammar Gafhafi marks the end of an era of despotism and repression from which the Libyan people have suffered for too long," it read. "We call on the National Transitional Council to pursue a broad based reconciliation process which reaches out to all Libyans and enables a democratic, peaceful and transparent transition in the country."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reacted to Gadhafi's reported death with the Latin phrase "Sic transit gloria mundi," which means, "So goes the glory of the world." He added: "Now the war is over."
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The Libyan revolutionary leader Moammar Gadhafi in one of the first pictures taken of him following the military putsch of Sept. 1, 1969. He would rule Libya for 42 years.
In February of this year, Libyans had finally had enough of their leader. Protests turned into an insurgency which ultimately, with the help of NATO, drove Gadhafi from Tripoli.
The son of a Bedouin, Gadhafi spent much of his time in a tent in Tripoli. His dark sunglasses and extravagant clothes also become something of a Gadhafi trademark.
Gadhafi's early role model was the Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser (left, in an image from 1969). Later, Gadhafi broke with the idea of pan-Arabism.
The dictator was able to solidify his power with a campaign of Islamization. He forbade alcohol and closed down US and British military bases in the country. Foreigners were told to leave. Gadhafi even forced the Italian community in Libya to exhume the remains of their dead family members and take them back to Italy. He showed the event on live television.
Gadhafi was a primary backer of "Islamic Socialism." He granted himself the title "Revolutionary Leader of Libya" in 1979. Criticism of his leadership grew outside of Libya.
The bomb attack on the Berlin disco La Belle in the night of April 5, 1986, was one of the most serious terror attacks against US troops in Germany. Three people died in the explosion.
Gadhafi's agents were blamed for the attack and the US bombed the Libyan capital Tripoli. The Libyan dictator did his best to instrumentalize the death of civilians in those attacks. Here, Gadhafi gives an interview to Soviet journalists.
In 1988, Libyan terrorists carried out the mid-air bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. The attack killed 270 people.
Gadhafi was omnipresent in Libyan life. Here, a gigantic poster of the dictator covers the wall of a building in Tripoli.
In 1996, an assailant attempted to assassinate Gadhafi with a hand grenade, seen in the picture. The New York Times reported that the British secret service had a hand in financing the attack.
Gadhafi was long considered to be something of a ladies' man and was cared for by a team of nurses from Eastern Europe. For eight years, the Ukrainian nurse Halyna Kolotnytska, seen here, seldom left his side. She returned to Kiev once the uprising began last spring.
Gadhafi played a key mediation role in the hostage drama on the Philippine island of Jolo in 2000. The Germans Werner and Marc Wallert were freed as were several others -- for a ransom of $1 million per prisoner.
By 2010, Gadhafi was one of the longest-serving despots on the African continent. Here, he is seen with Tunisian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak in October 2010. Three out of the four have been toppled in the Arab Spring and only Saleh is still clinging to power.
In 2003, Gadhafi underwent a foreign-policy about-face and renounced weapons of mass destruction. The move was likely more the result of political calculation that personal conviction. Here, a Libyan soldier driving a vehicle mounted with missiles in a 1999 military parade.
Then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder meeting with Gadhafi in his Bedouin tent in Tripoli in 2004. The first ever visit of a German head of government to Libya marked the beginning of expanded relations between the two countries.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with Gadhafi during the EU-Africa summit in 2010. In March 2011, Westerwelle abstained from the UN Security Council vote authorizing the imposition of a no fly zone over Libya due to Gadhafi's aggression against anti-regime activists. Westerwelle's move was widely criticized.
Gadhafi was famous for his collection of female bodyguards. This image shows him arriving in Rome for a visit in August 2010. He said he felt better protected by women than by men.
Members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group leaving prison after being released in February of this year. The release occurred just one day after the beginning of the violent protests that would ultimately bring down Gadhafi's dictatorship. The protests were led by family members of the some 1,200 prisoners who were killed in a 1996 massacre.
Gadhafi installed family members in important positions of power in his state apparatus. His eight children played a particularly important role. Saif al-Islam, pictured here, was long considered to be Gadhafi's likely successor. Educated in the West, many considered Saif to be more reasonable than his father. Now, however, he stands accused of crimes against humanity.
Another son, Hannibal, is known primarily for having been arrested for assault in Switzerland in 2008. The arrest caused a diplomatic crisis between Libya and Switzerland. He has fled to Algeria.
Gadhafi's appearance before the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 became legendary. In his first ever visit to the US, he ranted and raved for 100 minutes, six times his allotted time. He ripped up a UN charter during his speech.
Gadhafi at a military parade in Tripoli in 1999. He became known for his gaudy wardrobe and his eccentricities. For the 40th anniversary of his rule, he threw a multi-million dollar party including trick riders, military marches, fireworks and gigantic images of his "enemies" who had been hanged by the regime.
His eccentricity often got him into trouble with the global community. In 1982, the CIA became convinced that he was psychologically ill.
Gadhafi appeared on Libyan television several times during the spring of 2011, even as demonstrations and an insurgency raged on. He said he would fight to the death.
An appearance in February of this year was particularly odd. Gadhafi appeared on television sitting in a car and holding an umbrella. "I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela," he said, in an effort to counter speculation that he had already left Libya.
Insurgency soldiers celebrating the taking of Gadhafi's birthplace of Sirte. A short time later, the Libyan transitional national council announced that Gadhafi was dead.