Daughter Aisha & Wife Safia Muammar Qaddafi’s wife Safia, his daughter Aisha, and his sons Hannibal and Mohammed were said to have entered Algeria on Monday, the official Algeria Press Service reported on its web site.
The press agency said their arrival had been reported to the United Nations and the Libyan rebel authorities.
The embattled Qaddafi and two of his sons, meanwhile, are reportedly in hiding in the town of Bani Walis south of Tripoli, the Italian news agency ANSA said on Monday, citing “authoritative Libyan diplomatic sources.”
Abessalam Jalloud, a former Libyan prime minister who defected to Italy, last week said Col. Qaddafi could be hiding south of Tripoli.
“There are two possibilities: either he is hiding south of Tripoli or he left some time ago,” Jalloud told reporters.
The leader of the rebel National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, on Monday cautioned against a let-up in international action against Qaddafi, saying he “still poses a danger, not only for Libya but for the world.”
“That is why we are calling for the coalition to continue its support,” Abdel Jalil said at a meeting of chiefs of staff in Doha of countries militarily involved in Libya.
Italy is Libya’s former colonial ruler and enjoyed close diplomatic and economies ties with Col. Qaddafi’s regime before the start of a popular uprising this year. It has since joined the international coalition against Qaddafi’s regime.
Qaddafi son ‘almost certainly’ killed
ANSA also said that another of Col. Qaddafi’s sons, Khamis Qaddafi, had “almost certainly” been killed when he was traveling from Tripoli to Bani Walid.
ANSA cited the same diplomatic sources in Rome, saying that Col. Qaddafi’s wife Safia and three of his other children, Aisha, Hannibal and Mohammed, were in Algeria.
The Egyptian news agency MENA, quoting unidentified rebel fighters, had reported from Tripoli over the weekend that six armored Mercedes sedans, possibly carrying Qaddafi’s sons or other top regime figures, had crossed the border at the southwestern Libyan town of Ghadamis into Algeria. Algeria’s Foreign Ministry denied that report.
Meanwhile, ongoing battles rage on two sides of Sirte, Col. Qaddafi’s hometown and his regime’s last major bastion.
Despite effectively ending the strongman’s rule, the rebels have yet to find Col. Qaddafi or his family members, a fact that has cast a pall of lingering uncertainty over the opposition’s victory.
Rebels to demand handover of Qaddafi relatives
Ahmed Jibril, an aid to rebel National Transitional Council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, said that if the report of Qaddafi’s relatives being in Algeria is true, “we will demand that Algerian authorities hand them over to Libya to be tried before Libyan courts.”
Ahmed Bani, military spokesman of the council, said he was unsurprised to hear Algeria had welcomed Qaddafi relatives. Throughout the six-month Libyan uprising, rebels have accused Algeria of providing Qaddafi with mercenaries to fight the opposition.
Earlier on Monday, Abdul-Jalil told senior NATO envoys meeting in Qatar that Qaddafi can still cause trouble.
“Qaddafi is still capable of doing something awful in the last moments,” Abdul-Jalil told military chiefs of staff and other key defense officials from NATO nations, including France, Italy and Turkey.
“Even after the fighting ends, we still need logistical and military support from NATO,” he added. NATO has been bombing Qaddafi’s forces since March under a United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians.
Rebels appear to have secured the capital after a week of fierce fighting in which they captured Qaddafi’s compound and then routed loyalists holed up in the residential neighborhood of Abu Salim
Outside Tripoli, Col. Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte is still a bastion of support and some have even speculated that the ousted leader himself may have fled there. Rebels have been converging on the town from the east and west preparing to battle Qaddafi loyalists.
A NATO officer who could not be identified becayse to alliance regulations said that battles were reported 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Sirte. He said the regions of Sirte, Bani Walid south of Misrata and Sebha further south are conflict areas in which both anti-Qaddafi and pro-Qaddafi forces continue to operate.
However, no fighting in Sirte itself has been reported and rebel leaders say they are trying to negotiate a peaceful surrender with local tribes to avoid further bloodshed.
Rebels say they want to take Qaddafi alive so they can try him in Libya.
In the capital, members of the National Transitional Council to further steps in their efforts to form an effective government. Suleiman Mahmoud al-Obeidi, the rebels’ deputy military chief, announced the formation of a 17-member committee to represent the 30 or so local military councils he said had been set up in the country’s west.
The uprising has been was fought by disparate, loosely coordinated local groups, and bringing the local groups and rebel brigades under the council’s leadership remains a challenge.
The rebel leadership, based in Benghazi throughout the war, has begun to move to Tripoli. On Monday, France said it was dispatching a team of diplomats to reopen the French embassy there.
The European Union was also establishing a foothold in Tripoli. Kristalina Georgieva, European commissioner for international aid, said that the EU had opened a humanitarian office to help distribute medical and other emergency aid in the Libyan capital.