"I don't know whether there is a formal request. Libyan interim Oil and Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni said he wanted NATO to maintain its mission for another month, but hoped for a swift end to United Nations sanctions to free up funds for the interim government to pay salaries and help reconstruction. A NATO statement on Tuesday said operations in the interim would involve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, although NATO would retain the capability to conduct air strikes if they were needed. There is mobile phone footage of the moment Gaddafi was captured, showing him alive, according to Al Jazeera. An NTC official said Saif al-Islam was in the southern desert near Niger and Algeria and was set to flee Libya using a false passport. The one remaining element from the old order is Gaddafi's sons, the enigmatic Saif al-Islam, who remains on the run. The NTC has repeatedly said that they will distinguish themselves from the Gaddafi regime in terms of the respect of human rights and the rule of law," he told a news conference in Morocco. "Now is the time for them to begin actions that will help them reinforce these words." Asked whether it would have been better to have put Gaddafi on trial, he said: 
 
 It is now Gaddafi's fate; he has faced his fate and it is not [an] important matter if he is alive or dead. The final thing, the good thing: we get rid of Gaddafi and his crimes. The likely decision to end the alliance's patrols over the skies of Libya at the end of the month marks another milestone in what the National Transitional Council (NTC) has pledged will be a road toward democracy and free and fair elections in 2013. But I recognise that this is only the end of the beginning. TRIPOLI NATO is to formally decide on Wednesday whether to end its mission over Libya now that Muammar Gaddafi is dead and buried and the country's new leaders have declared the nation "liberated".
– Moammar Gadhafi is dead, according to the National Transitional Council. Libyan revolutionary fighters took the city of Sirte today, and in the process captured the former strongman, who was wounded in both legs while trying to flee the city in a convoy that NATO planes attacked, a senior NTC official tells Reuters. "He was also hit in his head," the official said. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died." US officials are working to confirm the report. The Guardian has a photo that purports to depict a bloody Gadhafi here (Warning: it's graphic). The strike also reportedly killed the head of Gadhafi's armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr. Earlier, AP reporters watched as rebels fought a 90-minute battle to rout pro-Gadhafi fighters from their remaining neighborhoods in Sirte, apparently ending the last major battle of the Libyan war. "Sirte has been liberated. There are no Gadhafi forces anymore," an NTC colonel said. "We are now chasing his fighters who are trying to run away." Not all Gadhafi forces are running through; the Telegraph says there are reports of some taking off their uniforms and firing indiscriminately on civilians. (Click for the latest updates on the death of Gadhafi.)