Gadhafi, Libya's leader for 42 years, killed

Muammar Gaddafi was killed on Thursday as Libya's new leaders declared they had overrun the last bastion of his long rule, sparking wild celebrations that eight months of war may finally be over.

Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for 42 years until he was ousted by rebels in a bloody civil war, was killed Thursday when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his hometown, Sirte, the last major bastion of resistance two months after the regime fell.

Details of the death near Sirte of the fallen strongman were hazy but it was announced by several officials of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and backed up by a photograph of a bloodied face ringed by familiar, Gaddafi-style curly hair.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

Western powers, who have backed the rebellion which took the capital Tripoli two months ago, said they were still checking. NATO said its aircraft fired on a convoy near Sirte earlier, but would not confirm reports that Gaddafi had been a passenger.

Several NTC fighters in Sirte said they had seen Gaddafi shot dead, though their accounts varied.

With a final declaration of the country's "liberation" from 42 years of one-man rule apparently imminent, and crowds firing in the air and dancing in the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi, Libyan television said NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil was about to address the nation.

The two months since the fall of Tripoli have tested the nerves of the motley alliance of anti-Gaddafi forces and their Western and Arab backers, who had begun to question the ability of the NTC forces to root out diehard Gaddafi loyalists in Sirte and a couple of other towns.

Officials said some of Gaddafi's entourage had been killed in the same incident, while his son Mo'tassim and other aides were taken prisoner. Another son, Saif -- long the heir-apparent -- was believed by the NTC to be still at large, possibly in the immense southern deserts of the Libyan Sahara.