NIGER

Ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will be buried Tuesday in a secret desert grave, a National Transitional Council official said Monday night, ending a wrangle over his rotting corpse that led many to fear for Libya's governability.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, a fugitive son of the recently killed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, is near Libya's borders with Niger and Algeria and planning to flee the country using a forged passport, according to the National Transitional Council.

Nigeria's military said on Monday they had detained a small oil tanker and arrested 46 people trying to ship illegally refined oil products, pursuing a fight against an underground industry worth hundred of millions of dollars a year.

For Libya, it is a form of liberation and rebirth, following the death of former dictator, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The new rulers have made a statement, by leaving Gadhafi's body, for the third day, in Misrata. The whole scene looked quite like a carnival, as people lined up to look at the decomposing bodies of Gadhafi, his son and an army chief.

Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi is shocked and outraged by the vicious brutality shown towards his father and brother Mo'tassim and said it showed no one connected to the former government would receive a fair trial in Libya, Saadi's lawyer said on Sunday.

The death of Moammar Gadhafi has definitely clarified one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the global oil market: There is now one fewer issue to hinder production security in a host of oil hot spots.

The dictator's once-powerful family is now scattered to various fates.

After 42 years, Moammar Gadhafi era is now finally complete, with the former dictator either dead or captured.

Timeline: Libya's civil war nears end

Celebratory bursts of gunfire and fireworks lit up the skies over Tripoli early Thursday as word spread that Libyan government fighters had captured Moammar Gadhafi's son Mo'tassim in Sirte.

Libyan government fighters captured Moammar Gadhafi's son Mo'tassim in Sirte Wednesday after he tried to escape the battle-torn city in a car, the National Transitional Council said.

Libya's National Transition Council said they are ready to declare victory after eight months of revolution, once they have captured the city of Sirte.

Nigeria experienced an explosion of violence over the weekend, with a number of militant attacks occurring all over the country. On Sunday, 23 people were killed when around 70 attackers stormed the village of Ligyado in Zamfara State armed with AK47 rifles, daggers, machetes and sticks.

Gunmen shot and hacked to death 18 people in a village in northwest Nigeria on Sunday, police said.

His whereabouts had been a mystery for weeks.

Moammar Gadhafi is believed to be hiding near the southwestern town of Ghadamis near the Algerian border under the protection of Tuareg tribesmen, a senior Libyan military official said.

Canada-based gold miner Semafo Inc. said on Monday it halted operations at its Kiniero gold processing plant in Guinea and evacuated its expatriate workers after a violent protests by locals over jobs.

Diehard loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi threw rockets, mortars and heavy gunfire at Libyan fighters who pushed into two besieged towns on Friday in a bid to end months of civil war and capture key figures from the old ruling system.

Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron landed in Libya to a heroes' welcome on Wednesday, promising help for the new rulers that French and British air power helped to install and being told the favour may be repaid in business contracts.

Gunmen shot dead four people in a bar in the northeastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri in the latest strike by a radical Islamist sect, police said on Tuesday.

Libyan transitional forces besieging a bastion of forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday gave residents two days to leave before a threatened onslaught, and fears rose for the fate of civilians trapped in the last redoubts of the fallen strongman.