Libyan government officials confirmed Thursday that ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi has died from wounds related to his capture.
Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril confirmed Gadhafi had been killed. "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.
Officials said Gadhafi suffered wounds to his legs and head during the attack and died shortly thereafter.
"He was also hit in his head," a National Transitional Council official told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."
Gadhafi's son and former national security adviser Muatassim Gadhafi was also killed in the fighting and another son, Seif al-Islam, Gadhafi's one-time heir apparent, was badly wounded.
   
Speaking Thursday from the White House Rose Garden about the death of Gadhafi, President Obama said that “the dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted." He called upon Libyans to embrace the challenges that lie ahead in building a new nation and asked them to utilize the support of the international community in maintaining human rights and securing dangerous materials.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also commented on the events, calling Gadhafi's death a “new opportunity for Libya to move forward.”
Writes the Associated Press:
"During nearly 42 years in power in Libya, Moammar Gadhafi was one of the world's most eccentric dictators, so mercurial that he was both condemned and courted by the West, while he brutally warped his country with his idiosyncratic vision of autocratic rule until he was finally toppled by his own people. The modern Arab world's longest-ruling figure, Libya's "Brother Leader" displayed striking contrasts. He was a sponsor of terrorism whose regime was blamed for blowing up two passenger jets, who then helped the U.S. in the war on terror. He was an Arab nationalist who mocked Arab rulers. In the crowning paradox, he preached a "revolutionary" utopia of people power but ran a one-man dictatorship that fueled the revolution against him."
Celebratory gunfire and cries of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" rang out across Tripoli as the reports spread. In Sirte, former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of fighting.

(Photo: AP Photo/ Abdel Magid Al Fergany, File)