Muammar Qadhafi was killed by Libyans he once scorned as "rats", succumbing to wounds, some seemingly inflicted after his capture by fighters who overran his last redoubt on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte. Two months after Western-backed rebels ended 42 years of eccentric, often bloody, one-man rule by capturing the capital Tripoli, his death and the fall of the final bastion ended a nervous hiatus for the new interim government, which is now set to declare formal "liberation" with a timetable for elections.

The killing or capture of senior aides, including possibly two sons, as an armoured convoy braved Nato air strikes in a desperate bid to break out of Sirte, may ease fears of die-hards regrouping elsewhere - though cellphone video apparently of Qadhafi alive and being beaten may inflame his sympathisers.

A Libyan official said Qadhafi, 69, was killed in custody. "We confirm that all the evils, plus Qadhafi, have vanished from this beloved country," 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 Qadhafi'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." A formal declaration of liberation, that will set the clock ticking on a timeline to elections, would be made by Friday, he said. 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. Jerky video obtained from Sirte showed a man looking like Qadhafi, with distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.

The brief footage shows him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive", he disappears from view and gunshots are heard. "They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. "He might have been resisting." Driven in an ambulance from Sirte, his partially stripped body was delivered to a mosque in Misrata. Senior NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters that DNA tests were being conducted to confirm it was Qadhafi. He would be buried in Misrata, most likely by Friday according to Muslim custom.

Officials said his son Mo'tassim, also seen bleeding but alive in a video, had also died. Another son, heir-apparent Saif al-Islam, was variously reported to be surrounded, captured or killed as conflicting accounts of the day's events crackled around networks of NTC fighters rejoicing in Sirte.

Copyright Reuters, 2011