Libyan Rebels Seize Most of Capital ~ DMV Africans

People celebrate the capture in Tripoli of Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, at the rebel-held town of Benghazi, Libya

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi was a hunted man on Monday as loyal remnants of his forces made a last-ditch stand in the capital and world leaders embraced the fractious Libyan rebels as new masters of the oil-rich North African state.

Nearly 48 hours after a pincer thrust on Tripoli by the irregular rebel armies, launched in tandem with an uprising in the city, Gaddafi's tanks and sharpshooters appeared to hold only small areas, including his Bab al-Aziziya headquarters.

Civilians, who mobbed the streets late on Sunday to cheer the end of dictatorship, stayed indoors as gunfire crackled. Gaddafi's prime minister showed up in Tunisia. State television went off the air and rebels said they had seized its transmitters.

More Libyan embassies abroad hoisted the rebel flag.

Western powers who deployed air power in support of various rebel groups in different regions, urged the "Brother Leader" to accept his 42 years of absolute power were over, and to end the bloodshed after six months of civil war that has ebbed and flowed erratically across the sparsely populated desert nation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who took an early gamble on the Libyan rebels, called on Gaddafi loyalists "to turn their back on the criminal and cynical blindness of their leader by immediately ceasing fire, giving up their arms and turning themselves in to the legitimate Libyan authorities".

A boy holds a drawing depicting Moammar Gadhafi and his son Seif al-Islam being hanged during celebrations of the capture in Tripoli of the son at the rebel-held town of Benghazi, Libya