Obama says fight not over Qadhafi's whereabouts were not known. Rebels said they held three of his sons, including his heir apparent Seif al-Islam. Civilians, who had mobbed the streets on Sunday to cheer the end of dictatorship, stayed indoors as machinegun fire and explosions punctuated some of the heaviest fighting of the Arab Spring uprisings that have been reshaping the Middle East.
US President Barack Obama said the conflict was not quite finished but that Qadhafi's 42-year rule was over. He urged him to surrender to end the bloodshed. Obama and his Nato allies backed the six-month revolt with air power but eschewed the ground combat that cost American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Your revolution is your own," he told Libyans, offering US aid but not troops and urging the rebels to avoid settling scores in blood. "The Libya you deserve is within your reach." Reuters correspondents witnessed firefights and clashes with heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, as rebels tried to flush out snipers and pockets of resistance. Hundreds of people seem to have been killed or wounded since Saturday.
Al-Jazeera said that of three Qadhafi sons captured, one - Mohammed - had escaped. It added that the body of a fourth, military commander Khamis, might have been found along with that of powerful intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. The station, based in Qatar whose rulers have provided the most visible Arab support to the rebels, cited unnamed sources.
In a last, defiant, audio broadcast on Sunday before state television went off the air, Qadhafi said he was still in Tripoli, and would stay "until the end". There has been speculation he might seek refuge in his home region around Sirte, or abroad. It is over two months since he was last seen in public.
EMBASSIES CHANGE FLAGS A US official said there was no evidence Gaddafi had fled the country. He has few friends left. His prime minister turned up in Tunisia. More Libyan embassies hoisted the rebel flag. "Today is a great day for Libya," declared Ali Awidan, the ambassador to the African Union in Addis Ababa. He reminded African states which were once among Gaddafi's few allies that rebels would now control Libya's "billions of dollars". "Gaddafi will soon be captured," the envoy said.
Foreign governments which had hesitated to take sides, among them Gaddafi's Arab neighbours, Russia and China also made clear his four decades of absolute power were over. Western powers who have mounted air strikes in support of a variety of rebel groups, urged the 69-year-old "Brother Leader" to halt the bloodshed after six months of civil war that had ebbed and flowed over wide expanses of North African desert.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who took an early gamble on the rebels and may now reap diplomatic benefits, called on the Gaddafi loyalists "to turn their back on the criminal and cynical blindness of their leader by immediately ceasing fire".
Paris offered to host a summit on Libya next week. Egypt, still grappling with the fall of its own autocrat, abandoned its caution and recognised the rebel government. Other beleaguered Arab revolutionaries, notably in Syria, may take heart from a hard-fought triumph in the sands of Libya. After Gaddafi, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be "the most miserable person on earth", said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political scientist in the United Arab Emirates: "Gaddafi's fall," he said, "will also inspire the Syrian people."
SONS DETAINED Among those detained was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the face of his father's rapprochement with the West over the past decade but now indicted with his father for crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court said it hoped to question him at The Hague, though a rebel official said Libya might try him.