Images purportedly showing Moammar Kadafi's body circulate on Web - Los Angeles Times
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Images purportedly showing Moammar Kadafi’s body circulate on Web

By Alexandra Zaviswriter 
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Images and video are circulating on the Internet that purportedly show the bloodied body of Libya’s former leader, Moammar Kadafi, after the capture Thursday of his hometown, Surt.

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera television shows a man who looks like Kadafi lying on the ground. Shouting can be heard in the background as fighters turn over the limp body to show the man’s face.

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The network said it obtained the footage from a fighter loyal to Libya’s provisional government who was at the scene.

PHOTOS: Moammar Kadafi reportedly killed in fall of Surt

Kadafi’s body was apparently taken by fighters to the nearby city of Misurata, according to news reports. Al Arabiya television broadcast footage showing a body said to be Kadafi’s being paraded through the city on top of a vehicle. Fighters from Misurata led the weeks-long offensive against Surt.

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Images of what appeared to be Kadafi’s body were also released by news agencies and circulated on Twitter. The authenticity of the images and footage has not been verified.

Libya’s provisional prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, said Thursday that Kadafi had been killed but the circumstances remained murky.

According to one account, Kadafi tried to escape from Surt in a convoy that was hit by a NATO airstrike. But Jibril told a news conference in the capital, Tripoli, that Kadafi was not killed in the strike. Fighters in Surt said they shot and killed Kadafi.

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-- Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles. Amro Hassan contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

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