Fighters with Libya's interim government celebrate at Martyrs' Square in Tripoli Oct 20, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

"They beat him, then they killed him"

From there Gadhafi was taken to Sirte where he and his dwindling band of die-hard supporters had made a last stand under a rain of missile and artillery fire in a desperate two-month siege.

Video footage showed Gadhafi, dazed and wounded, but still clearly alive and as he was dragged from the front of a pick-up truck by a crowd of angry jostling government soldiers who hit him and pulled his hair to drag him to the ground.

He then appeared to fall to the ground and was enveloped by the crowd. NTC officials later announced Gadhafi had died of his wounds after capture.

Someone in the crowd shouted "keep him alive, keep him alive", but another fighter cried out in a high pitched crazed scream. Gadhafi then goes out of view and gunshots are heard.

Further television footage showed what appeared to be Gadhafi's lifeless body being loaded into an ambulance in Sirte.

An NTC spokesman in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined Gadhafi when he arrived in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen.