Former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi was shot and killed today in Sirte, Libya.
After being found in a nearby sewage pipe and captured by the Libyan Private Military, Gaddafi showed no signs of resistance and remained unharmed until gunfire broke out between the ex-ruler’s loyalists and transitional government groups.
Gaddafi had survived a NATO airstrike of a convoy in the area, according to a senior NATO official.
When Gaddafi entered his captor’s vehicle, he sustained a wound to his right arm. As his captors drove away, Gaddafi received a single bullet to the head and died just before reaching a local hospital.
The Tripoli military council has reported that Mutassim, one of Gaddafi’s sons, and his chief of intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, were also killed.
“This marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya who now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya,” President Obama said in a statement to the press in the White House Rose Garden earlier today.
Obama encouraged the move toward a democractic Libya, and said that, “for the region, today’s events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end.”