More than 400 killed, 2,000 injured in Tripoli battle: Libya rebel leader

More than 400 people were killed and at least 2,000 injured in the three-day fight to seize control of the Libyan capital Tripoli from Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's forces, Chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council told Al Arabiya on Wednesday.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil confirmed the rebels had taken control of Qaddafi’s heavily fortified residential complext Bab al-Azizya, adding that remnants of Qaddafi forces remained entrenched in several neighborhoods of the capital while stressing that battle for Tripoli was not yet over.

Libyan gestures with firearms to celebrate the rebels' entry into Bab al-Aziziya in Tripoli.

There were only “pockets of resistance” left in Tripoli along with troops in Sirte, the leader’s historic stronghold.

The whereabouts of Libyan strongman Qaddafi remained unknown Wednesday. Abdel Jalil said he suspected Qaddafi would escape toward the south of the country and possibly out to Algeria or Chad.

Earlier, Abdel Jalil told the Italian La Repubblica daily that Qaddafi will be tried in the country if he is detained.

The mass of opinion within the NTC was that Qaddafi and his cohorts should be judged “in a fair trial, but it must take place in Libya,” he said.

The rebel leader said the “Qaddafi era is over, even if it will only really end with his capture and his conviction for the crimes he has committed.”

For that to happen “we need to take them alive and treat them differently from the way the colonel treated his adversaries. He will stay in the memory only for the crimes, the arrests and the political assassinations he carried out,” he added.

New Libya

A Libyan gestures with firearms to celebrate the rebels' entry into Bab al-Aziziya in Tripol.i

Abdel Jalil said the “new” Libya “must be a different country from the past, based on the principles of freedom, equality and fraternity,” and will have “strong relations with other countries, based on mutual respect and cooperation.”

“We will be an active member of the international community and we will respect the treaties signed in the past,” he said.

He said Libya will hold legislative and presidential elections in eight months to establish a “democratic government and a just constitution.”

“Above all we do not wish to continue to be isolated in the world as we have been up to now,” he added in comments published in the Italian La Repubblica daily.