Libyans giddy over nation's liberation

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Exultant civilians and rebels converged on Friday on the battle-scarred seat of Moammar Gadhafi's power, Bab al-Azzazia.

As rebel fighters prepared to attack what they say is the last pocket of Gadhafi loyalists in the capital, other Libyans streamed into the compound where the dictator had ranted against the six-month revolution that appears to have toppled him.

A green, red and black rebel flag fluttered atop his bombed-out headquarters.

"This used to be a monster's palace," said pilot Omar Abu Garara, 55. "It was my hope, my dream, to see this place destroyed, to finish an era."

Gone was a heroic-sized monument of a golden fist crushing a U.S. fighter jet.

American warplanes struck Bab al-Azzazia in 1986 after Libya bombed a Berlin discotheque, killing three people -- two of them U.S. soldiers -- and wounding 230, with 79 of them Americans.

Gadhafi defiantly erected the monument, maintained the bombed buildings and put up tents, bunkers and houses on the sprawling compound.

It was expected to be his last-stand holdout.

So far, he has eluded rebels who continue to search for him with NATO's help.

Parents brought their children, some gleefully chanting, "Gadhafi, you Chihuahua, we liberated Libya with small explosives!"

One young man danced in a looted Gadhafi outfit: a long, embroidered lavender gown and white hat.

"Freedom! Freedom!" he shouted in Arabic, barely audible over endless bursts of celebratory gunfire and chants of "Allahu Akbar!" -- "God is great!"

Overcome with emotion, Garara, the pilot, stood beside the toppled fist statue.

"This guy wanted to rule the world. He wanted to be like Rome's Caesar," he said of Gadhafi.

Later, Garara stood in an upstairs room of one building with green, red and white furniture and red flowery wallpaper. "Look at how tacky this furniture is," he sniffed.

Retired oilman Ali Feturi, 73, stood beside three friends from Tripoli. "Here's where the devils met," he said. "I prayed every day that before I die, I want to see him leave."

Nearby, a young man in a maroon beret hacked at a cement beam with a pick.

Outside, in a tent where Gadhafi has entertained world leaders over the years, only dark-green carpeting and chandeliers were left behind by looters.

Men climbed down into the dark of a bunker, no one quite sure where it would lead.

Others stood on a podium, swirling in dance, lifting their hands in V-for-victory signs or chanting, "God is great!" where Gadhafi once exhorted his subjects to oppose the West.

"There is no dictator like him," said fiction writer and journalist Hussein Mizdawi, 51, who brought his two small sons to see the spectacle.

The freshness of the fighting here was clearly visible in a square outside the compound where the regime's green flags still hung.

Eight bloated corpses, some under carpets, rotted in the sun. Blackened apartment buildings, their walls scarred by gun, missile and artillery fire, filled the neighborhood.

Yet it was Gadhafi's brutality that captivated most people in the compound.

Said Feturi: "Before, when we used to cross the road near here, we weren't sure we would make it home."

More fighting had been expected in the city's Abu Saleem section, site of a notorious prison. Human rights activists say the regime murdered 1,200 prisoners there in 1996.

Salah Mabrouk, a battle-hardened rebel from Misrata, said Gadhafi's forces there surrendered.

"We went with a big force of around 1,000 ... to Abu Saleem," said Mabrouk, 31, a civil engineer before the revolution. "I told them, 'We are all brothers. Throw down your guns. We can live together.'

"Most of the men were Tuareg (from southern Libya), and they were afraid of the guys from Misrata."

He said, "We hoped to catch (Gadhafi) today, but now I think he's not in Tripoli. Maybe he is in Sirte" -- Gadhafi's hometown -- "or Sabha," another city where fighting rages.

Across the capital, electrical, water and Internet services died, and the city appeared to be low on food and fuel.

Despite such shortages, a veiled woman in a passing car cheered: "We're happy! We're happy! These are our soldiers! Freedom! Freedom!"

Nabil Gaddi, 30, a rebel from the mountain town of Zintan who owns an oil company, heard her joyful shout.

"That feels so good," he said. "It's the first time I've been to my home in Tripoli in seven months."

Then, as he too drove off, he added: "Say hello to America for me."