Libya celebrates as Gaddafi's remote strongholds rise against him

[steve2470]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/26/libya-celebrates-gaddafi-remote-strongholds

On the road west from Benghazi to Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi's Libya is being rapidly cleansed of his remnants. Just over a week into the revolution that few, even here, thought possible when it started, the eradication of a despot is well on the way to completion.

The town of Ajdabiya, 160km south of Benghazi, the regional capital, has long been one of the east of the country's most forsaken enclaves, a place where people were thought to have been tamed and cowed during Gaddafi's 42-year rule. No one seemed to get on in life from round here. This city has few heroes.

Now, the spoils of a remarkable victory are everywhere, along with the scars of an ignominious defeat. Every official building in town has been torched and ransacked, just like the state institutions to the east. Every image of the loathed leader has been torn down and defaced. The tired facades, the grim streets and hard-bitten locals are the only signs that a dictator once ruled here.

We stopped first at a town square where an effigy hung from a wire alongside the Libyan independence flag, last flown under the monarch Gaddafi ousted in 1969, King Idris. A small group of youths milled around an empty fountain, with a brand new feature – the wing of a fighter jet that plummeted to earth on Wednesday.