Tripoli, August 28: Libyan opposition fighters have found a network of tunnels and bunkers underneath the capital of Tripoli, belonging to the fugitive Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The tunnels stretch from Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound all the way to the city’s international airport as well as the Rixos hotel, where some 30 journalists had been held hostage for five days by regime forces, CNN reported on Friday.
Some 700 meters of the network has so far been cleared by the opposition fighters.
The fighters found rooms, containing beds and couches, in the massive underground passage, believed to have been set up as a survival bunker.
Another room in the tunnel network was set up as a TV studio, in which several video tapes were found; Gaddafi might have recorded some of the messages he aired before his compound was captured in this room.
Libya has been the scene of intense fighting between regime troops and opposition fighters since a revolution seeking to topple Gaddafi began in mid-February.
The fighters have seized much of the capital without facing any significant resistance from regime forces. However, they have not managed to find Gaddafi yet and his exact whereabouts are still unknown.
Meanwhile, the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) has announced that the Gaddafi era has ended.
——Agencies