RT @washingtonpost Video appears to show Gaddafi alive and wounded before his death:wapo.st/mT0TPh #Gadhafi #Libya[GRAPHIC!]
After eight months of civil war, the final stronghold of Moammar Gaddafi loyalists fell to Libyan fighters and Libyan prime minister Mahmoud Jibril said Gaddafi had been killed during the attack on Sirte. Follow along with the latest developments here:
12:38 p.m. Obama will make a statement at 2 p.m.
The president is expected to address the latest developments in Libya.
12:28 p.m. Celebrations erupt around the world 
(Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)Libyan National Transitional Council fighters carry a young man holding what they claim to be the gold-plated gun of ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
(Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)Libyan National Transitional Council fighters carry a young man holding what they claim to be the gold-plated gun of ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
12:25 p.m. Possible video of the moments after Gaddafi’s arrest
A video uploaded to YouTube on Thursday shows what appears to be a bloody Gaddafi surrounded by Libyan fighters. He appears to still be alive in the video, but badly wounded.
The video description says in Arabic, “Gaddafi, the moment of arrest,” however it is impossible to independently verify the contents of the video. CNN just aired
The images are graphic:
10:25 a.m. Unconfirmed photos and video flood the web
Footage of bloodied and dead man who resembled Gaddafi was aired on al-Jazeera Thursday. The network said that it obtained cellphone footage from a former rebel fighter who had been present. There were also reports that Gaddafi’s son Mutassim had been found dead.
Warning the images in the video are very graphic:
Twitter erupted with the news, with six of its top ten trending topics focusing on Libya. People began passing around an image that appears to have been taken by a cell phone and shows a bloodied Gaddafi.
AFP and Getty Images pushed out this photograph saying it was an image captured off a cellular phone camera showing the arrest of Libya's strongman Moammar Gaddafi. (Screengrab from Twitter)
AFP and Getty Images pushed out this photograph saying it was an image captured off a cellular phone camera showing the arrest of Libya's strongman Moammar Gaddafi. (Screengrab from Twitter)
Below is content from earlier this morning. The Libyan prime minister has confirmed Gaddafi was killed. Read the full story here.
There was no immediate confirmation of the death from independent sources.
“He’s captured. We don’t know if he’s dead or not,” Ibrahim Mohammed Shirkasiya, a senior security official in Misurata, the biggest city west of Sirte, told The Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan by telephone earlier on Thursday. He said his information came from revolutionary commanders in Sirte.
Reuters reports that Gaddafi was fleeing the city in a convoy when NATO warplanes attacked.
“We’ve had no confirmation whether Gaddafi was in there or not,” said a NATO official who spoke to The Post’s Michael Birnbaum on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. Over the past couple weeks in Sirte, the official said, “there was a sense that given the fight they were putting up, which was concerted, that they were protecting something important.”
Thursday, the official said, “we saw a convoy coming out. It was tracked by NATO. There was a limited amount of engagement.” The official said that forces under control of the Libyan National Transitional Council had also surrounded the area and were engaged in heavy exchanges of gunfire with the convoy.
“We’ve seen nothing coming out of that particular pocket” of Sirte “until today, so it was unusual,” the official said. The official described what had come under attack as not a single convoy, but “a number of different packets of vehicles attempting to break through.”
Gaddafi has proved elusive during the fighting and has not been seen since Tripoli fell. There have been a number of reports in the past that he was captured or near capture. Former U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley wrote on Twitter that Gaddafi’s death, if confirmed, would “help Libya avoid a lengthy and destructive insurgency.”
Libyan officials previously had said they believed Gaddafi to be hiding somewhere in the vast southwestern desert. Sirte is on the northern coast of the country. Reuters reported that the U.S. State Department could not confirm the capture of Gaddafi.
What is confirmed, though, is that Libyan fighters are raucously celebrating the fall of Sirte. The Associated Press reports:
“In the central quarter where the final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Gaddafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.
“They chanted ‘Allah akbar,’ or ‘God is great’ in Arabic, while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution’s flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Gaddafi’s fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.”
