Colonel Gaddafi died after being stabbed with bayonet, says report Hours before his death, a 50-car convoy of 250 fighters, including Gaddafi and his inner circle, had tried to male a break from Sirte where they had fled from Tripoli at the end of August. Two Nato missiles forced the group to abandon the cars and run off on foot. HRW believes 103 were then killed in a confrontation with rebels, while Gaddafi was captured as he sought refuge in a drainage ditch together with his defence minister, Abu Bakr Younis, and one of their guards. According to the report, the guard tried to throw a grenade at their rebel attackers, but it accidentally bounced back into the ditch, landing between Gaddafi and Younis. While the defence minister died, Gaddafi suffered serious shrapnel wounds to his head before being cornered by the rebels. As they led him on to a main road, one of the fighters stabbed Gaddafi with a bayonet, while others assaulted him, before he was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the city of Misurata, a trip of two hours. "Video footage, obtained by Human Rights Watch, taken at the scene of his capture appears to show Muammar Gaddafi's nearly naked and apparently lifeless body being loaded into an ambulance, suggesting that he may have been dead by the time he left the area of his capture," the report says Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said: "Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture." Of the remaining 150 members of the convoy, up to 66 Gaddafi loyalists were shot and killed at the Mahari Hotel just outside the city of Sirte. Others were taken to Misurata and killed.