TRIPOLI: A defiant Moammar Qaddafi vowed Wednesday to fight on "until victory or martyrdom," as rebel fighters tried to end scattered attacks by regime loyalists in the nervous capital.
The rebels say they have now taken control of nearly all of Tripoli, but sporadic gunfire could still be heard Wednesday, and Qaddafi loyalists fired shells and assault rifles at fighters who had captured the Libyan leader’s personal compound one day earlier.
The streets of the city were still largely deserted Wednesday, scattered with debris, broken glass and other remnants of fighting, while rebel fighters manned checkpoints every few hundred yards.
Rebel leaders, meanwhile, made their first moves to set up a new government in the capital. During Libya’s six-month civil war, opposition leaders had established their interim administration, the National Transitional Council, in the eastern city of Benghazi, which fell under rebel control shortly after the outbreak of widespread anti-regime protests in February.
"Members of the council are now moving one by one from Benghazi to Tripoli," said Mansour Seif Al-Nasr, the Libyan opposition’s new ambassador to France. He said that Tripoli is "secure and our guys are checking all the areas."
The deputy rebel chief, Mahmoud Jibril, was to meet later Wednesday with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of the Libyan opposition, along with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Even as his 42-year-old regime was crumbling around him, Qaddafi vowed not to surrender. In an audio message early Wednesday, he called on residents of the Libyan capital and loyal tribesmen across his North African nation to free Tripoli from the "devils and traitors" who have overrun it.
The broadcast came a day after hundreds of Libyan rebels stormed Qaddafi’s fortress-like Bab Al-Aziziya compound in the capital but found no sign of the longtime leader. Late Sunday, the rebels entered Tripoli, pouring into the Mediterranean metropolis of some 2 million people in a stunning breakthrough.
On Wednesday morning, rebel fighters said they still did not have full control of Bab Al-Aziziya. Mohammed Amin, a field commander, said regime loyalists continued to fire into the complex.
At one point, rebel fighters came under fire and briefly took cover, some running and others speeding toward the gate in pickup trucks, then returned. Shells were also fired at the complex.
It’s not clear where the shooting originated, but Amin said holdouts among regime loyalists have entrenched themselves in areas near the compound.
NATO’s role
In Brussels NATO planners were drawing up options for a possible NATO role in Libya after the civil war in the North African nation ends, officials said Wednesday.
NATO’s governing body — the North Atlantic Council — has told its military staff to brainstorm ways to assist a future U.N. mission to stabilize the country.
"The council provided the NATO military authorities with a set of political guidelines for a possible future NATO supporting role in Libya … in support of wider international efforts," NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.
Planners are expected to come up with options in the next week to present to the alliance’s political leadership.
NATO warplanes have flown nearly 20,000 sorties to Libya in the past five months, including about 7,500 strike attacks against Qaddafi’s forces. But the campaign has exposed deep fissures within the alliance, with only eight of its 28 members taking part in the military action.
Diplomats say a number of member states have been unhappy with the intervention in Libya, saying it was detracting attention and resources from NATO’s main mission in Afghanistan, where the 10-year war against the Taliban has not been going well for the alliance.
As a result, any follow-on mission in Libya is expected to be of limited size and duration.
The UN has already made significant progress in planning for a post-conflict stabilization effort in Libya.
Lungescu said the North Atlantic Council had agreed that any possible future supporting role for NATO must "satisfy the criteria of a demonstrable need, a sound legal basis and wide regional support."
Another condition was that NATO would not have any "sustained" troop presence on the ground in Libya, officials said.
Journalists released
Later on Wednesday, international journalists were freed from the Rixos Hotel after being held for days by armed men loyal to Qaddafi.
Associated Press journalists said they had left the Rixos in a car and were moving to another hotel.
The journalists had been held at gunpoint by two nervous Kalashnikov-wielding guards who refused to give up their posts despite rebel victories elsewhere in the city.
An Associated Press reporter who entered the hotel earlier Wednesday found the journalists wearing helmets and flak jackets, clustered on the second floor, where a guard said they weren’t permitted to leave.
Only two guards armed with AK-47s were visible but they were tense and became highly agitated when other journalists showed up at the gate, including a group in a car decorated with a rebel flag.
The younger guard fired his gun in the area and forced the journalists out at gunpoint. The guard forced the driver onto the ground and threatened to kill him.
The new journalists were eventually taken inside the hotel.
The journalists described running battles in the area for days as well as intermittent electricity.
They were sleeping huddled on the floor in one wing of the hotel to protect each other for fear of people being attacked in their rooms, their belongings packed in case of need for a sudden departure.
Save for the two guards, all the hotel employees had fled and the journalists were cooking for themselves. One guard expressed surprise when told most of the city was in rebel hands. Parked in front of the hotel was the bus once used by government minders to ferry journalists around the city — on its windshield was a huge poster of Qaddafi — one of the only ones apparently left in the city.
