Joyful Libyan rebels overran Muammar Qadhafi's Tripoli bastion on Tuesday, seizing weapons and loot and destroying symbols of a 42-year dictatorship they declared was now over as they set about hunting down the fallen ruler and his sons. "It's over! Qadhafi is finished!" yelled one fighter over a cacophony of celebratory gunfire across the Bab al-Aziziya compound, from where Qadhafi orchestrated eccentric defiance of Western powers and disdain for his own people for four decades.
The Western powers who backed the revolt with air power held off from pronouncing victory although a swift return to order is high on their priorities, given fears that ethnic and tribal divisions among the rebels could descend into the kind of anarchy that would thwart hopes of Libya resuming oil exports.
Rebel National Council chief Mustafa Abdel-Jalil cautioned: "It is too early to say that the battle of Tripoli is over. That won't happen until Qadhafi and his sons are captured." Armed men broke up a gilded statue of Qadhafi, kicking its face. Some seized the golf buggy the leader often used. Another rebel sported a heavily braided, peaked military cap of a kind favoured by the colonel, who seized power in 1969. He said he had taken the hat from Qadhafi's bedroom after a brief few hours of resistance by a loyal rearguard died away.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a rebel commander, said he did not know where Qadhafi or his sons were: "They ran like rats." Other rebel officials said they believed the 69-year-old "Brother Leader" was probably still not far away. Reuters correspondents in Tripoli said there still appeared to be some hostile fire around the city centre as darkness fell and looting continued. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "We're in the death throes of this regime ... But it's still a very difficult and dangerous time. It's not over yet."
The Russian head of the International Chess Federation, who had visited Tripoli in June, told Reuters that Qadhafi had called him on Tuesday. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said Qadhafi told him he was in the capital and was "prepared to fight to the end". Qadhafi had few places to make a stand. His home town of Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast between Tripoli and rebel Benghazi, was expected to welcome rebel forces shortly, Abdel-Jalil said. "It really looks like it's pretty much over," said David Hartwell, a Middle East analyst at IHS Jane's in London.
"There might be a few die-hards who would keep going until he is captured or killed, but not many. And if Qadhafi didn't have many places to hide before, he has even fewer now."
"HOUSE TO HOUSE" "House to house! Room to room!" chanted some men, calling for a search of the sprawling complex of bunkers and tunnels in a mocking echo of the words Qadhafi used six months ago when he threatened to crush early stirrings of the Arab Spring revolt. Inspired by neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt, Libyans who rose up in the east found protection from the air forces of Western governments who abandoned a short-lived rapprochement with Qadhafi to drive him from power and who now want to see order imposed and a swift restoration of Libyan oil exports.