SIRTE – Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after National Transitional Council fighters overran loyalist defenses in Sirte, the toppled Libyan leader’s hometown and final stronghold.

A man purported to be Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is seen in this still image taken from video footage October 20, 2011.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed,” Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto Libyan prime minister, told reporters on Thursday in Tripoli, the capital. 

Crowds took to the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi, the eastern city that spearheaded the uprising against Gaddafi’s 42-year rule in February, to celebrate the news, with some firing guns and waving Libya’s new flag. 

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, an NTC military chief, said Gaddafi had died of his wounds after being captured on Thursday. 

The body of the former Libyan leader was taken to a location that is being kept secret for security reasons, Mohamed Abdel Kafi, an NTC official in the city of Misrata, told the Reuters news agency. 

Earlier, Abdel Majid, another NTC official, said the toppled leader had been wounded in both legs. 

The news came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte after weeks of fierce fighting. 

“Thank God they have caught this person. In one hour, Sirte was liberated,” a fighter in the town said. 

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, reporting from Sirte, said Libyans there celebrating the beginning of a “new Libya”. 

“This is bringing a form of closure,” he said. “Gaddafi stayed true to his words, that he would stay in Libya till the end. 

“It was surprising to many that he did actually stay here in Sirte – it’s taken such a bombardment in the last 13 days. Nothing could survive in here for very long. I think they were starved of food, starved of ammunition, and finally there was nothing to do but to run”. 

Libya National Transitional Council Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam discussed more details of his death. “Revolutionaries say Gaddafi was in a convoy and that they attacked the convoy.”

Television networks around the world broadcast an apparent photograph of Gaddafi dead. Al Jazeera later aired footage of what appeared to be a bloodied but alive Gaddafi struggling to escape from the grip of several armed fighters who eventually hoisted him onto the front of a rebel truck. This suggests that he was not killed in battle but was either executed afterward or died from his wounds.

An official with Libya’s NTC later confirmed that the photo was that of Gaddafi, claiming that he died of wounds suffered during an attack by NTC fighters. Earlier in the day, officials said that the NTC had captured Gaddafi and that many of the former regime’s soldiers were dead. 

Colonel Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO’s operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance’s aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gaddafi forces “which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte.”

But NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance to alliance rules, said that NATO could not independently confirm whether Gaddafi was killed or captured.

NATO has been cautious in making a definitive announcement because past reports of Gaddafi family deaths or capture have later proven incorrect, even after announced officially. These false reports have often led to confusion among the revolutionary forces’ commanders, as well as and the rank and file.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, was expected to address Libyans later Thursday on the Free Libya channel.

One son flees, other reportedly killed 

In Tripoli, Jibril said he had received unconfirmed reports that Gaddafi’s most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, was in a convoy fleeing Sirte. 

Meanwhile, Mohamed Leith, an NTC commander, told the AFP news agency that Mutassim had been killed. 

“We found him dead. We put his body and that of (former defense minister) Abu Bakr Younus in an ambulance to take them to Misrata”. 

Footage had emerged earlier in the day of the body of Younus. 

Abdul Hakim Al Jalil, commander of the NTC’s 11th brigade, said that Moussa Ibrahim, the former spokesman for Gaddafi’s fallen government, had been captured near Sirte.