Oppositions offer $2m bounty on Gaddafi's head

(People's Daily Online)

08:12, August 25, 2011

Libyan oppositions hunting Moammar Gaddafi are offering a $2 million bounty on the fallen leader's head as they battled yesterday to clear the capital Tripoli.

Major international press, including China's CCTV, found that Gaddafi's support was crumbling in the city. And, his foreign minister said his 42-year rule in Libya was coming to an end.

However, a defiant Gaddafi, his whereabouts are not known, vowed from hiding that he will fight on "until victory or martyrdom," in an audio message released early yesterday.

Oppositions leaders are preparing to set up a new government in Tripoli. Their interim administration, the National Transitional Council (NTC), based in the eastern city of Benghazi, could be moved to the capital soon.

Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the opposition government, outlined plans for a new constitution and elections and said officials were talking to the United Nations about sending up to 200 monitors to help ensure security in Tripoli.

A day after rebels captured Gadhafi's vast Bab al-Aziziya compound, the symbolic center of his regime, loyalists were firing into the compound from an adjacent neighborhood where intense clashes broke out, The Associated Press said.

Tripoli's streets were largely empty of civilians. Rebels manned checkpoints every few hundred yards, but little could be seen beyond the debris of days of fighting and weeks of accumulated garbage, The AP reported.

Rebels found no sign of Gadhafi after storming his compound Tuesday, but rumors churned of his possible whereabouts. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there was no evidence he had left Libya, but rebel officials acknowledged they could not find him.

"He might be in Sirte or any other place," Jibril said in Paris, where he met French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 

Mohammed al-Herizi, an opposition official, said a group of Tripoli businessmen has offered a $2 million reward for the arrest or killing of Gadhafi. 

The rebels have taken control of much of Libya with the help of a relentless NATO air campaign that included about 7,500 strike attacks against Gadhafi's forces. His defenses around Tripoli melted away as the rebels rapidly advanced and entered the capital Sunday.

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