Rebel fighters deface a portrait of Muammar Gaddafi in his Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli, Libya, August 24, 2011.
The hunt for Muammar Gaddafi intensified on Thursday as rebel fighters tried to shoot their way into the leader's home town of Sirte 300 miles east of Tripoli, as they also waged fierce battles in the southern neighborhoods of the capital itself. As the full challenge of crushing the last remnants of Gaddafi's forces became clear, questions emerged over just how deeply involved Western countries were in hunting down the fugitive leader.
With rebels moving to defeat the final push by Gaddafi's forces, — with no way of knowing whether they number in the hundreds or thousands — a group of opposition fighters uncovered a huge horde of ammunition stashed by regime soldiers on the wooded grounds of the Rixos Hotel, where about 35 foreign journalists were eventually freed Wednesday, ending a five-day siege inside. That discovery, said some rebels, suggested that the area might have been planned as a staging ground by Gaddafi's forces in the event of a last-resort battle for Tripoli. A Sky News correspondent reported seeing dozens of corpses of Gaddafi fighters stacked in tents near the hotel. But the fight for control over the area continued, and gunfire erupted from high-rise buildings near the hotel, where snipers were believed to have positioned themselves.
After days of heavy urban warfare in Tripoli, doctors report being overwhelmed with casualties, and with stores closed since last Sunday, food shortages are growing. The humanitarian crisis is compounded by the thousands of Libyans flooding back to Libya after fleeing across the border to Tunisia during the past weeks. The U.N. voted to release $500 million to the rebels' National Transitional Council immediately in order to tackle the emergency situation. But that fell far short of the $1.5 billion, which the U.S. has asked the U.N. to approve.
Four days after the rebels stormed into Tripoli, effectively ending Gaddafi's 42-year rule and igniting wild euphoria, the whereabouts of the leader and his key aides remain a mystery. Aside from Gaddafi, his powerful sons Saif al-Islam and Khamis have also vanished, as has his intelligence chief Abdallah al-Senousi, who, like Gaddafi and Saif, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Rebels have said that they suspect Gaddafi might still be hiding within greater Tripoli, rather than having retreated to Sirte or the southern city of Sabha, both of which the regime still controls, and where Gaddafi had long built tribal allegiances. Gaddafi fighters repulsed a rebel advance on Sirte on Thursday, fighting back a column of fighters moving from the town. In Tripoli, a city of two million people, fighters have battled Gaddafi forces for two days over control of the international airport, and fighting continued to rage IN two other neighborhoods; all three sites are in southern Tripoli, near the Rixos and Gaddafi's sprawling compound of Bab al-Aziziyah, which rebels overran on Tuesday evening, dealing a death blow to Gaddafi's regime.
With a perilous power vacuum in Tripoli, Britain's Defense Secretary admitted on Thursday that NATO was more deeply involved in hunting down the leader than the organization had previously made public. He told Sky News "NATO is providing intelligence and reconnaissance assets to the NTC to help them track down Colonel Gaddafi and other remnants of the regime."