Today In History: Gadaffi is killed

Today In History (October 20, 2011)

Muammar Gaddafi was killed by Libyans he once scorned as "rats", succumbing to wounds, some seemingly inflicted after his capture by fighters.

A Libyan official said Gaddafi, 69, was killed in custody. A spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined the fallen strongman in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen.

Gadaffi ruled Libya for 42 years and was often accused of torture and human rights abuses.

"We confirm that all the evils, plus Gaddafi, have vanished from this beloved country," then interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in Tripoli as the body was delivered, a prize of war, to Misrata, the city whose siege and suffering at the hands of Gaddafi's forces made it a symbol of the rebel cause.

"It's time to start a new Libya, a united Libya," Jibril added. "One people, one future." 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who spearheaded a Franco-British move in NATO to back the revolt against Gaddafi hailed a turn of events that few had expected so soon, since there had been little evidence that Gaddafi himself was in Sirte.

But he also alluded to fears that, without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi, the new Libya could descend, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, into bloody factionalism.