Fugitive Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has told his supporters that he is still fighting on the ground and is ready to die a martyr, a loyalist website reported Tuesday. “Heroes have resisted and fallen as martyrs and we too are awaiting martyrdom,” the website of the defunct Allibiya state television channel quoted Gaddafi as saying in a speech broadcast on local radio in Bani Walid, one of his last remaining bastions. The toppled despot hailed the fierce resistance put up by his loyalists in Bani Walid. The region's Warfalla tribe was a major source of recruitment for the elite troops of Gaddafi's regime and the strongman told its members that they were continuing in that martial tradition. “You should know that I am on the ground with you. They lie when they say Gaddafi is in Venezuela or Gaddafi is in Niger. I am among my people and an unexpected shock awaits this clique of agents in the coming days.” Meanwhile, snipers defending Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte held off an advance Tuesday by interim government forces into the center of the city, one of the last bastions of supporters of the ousted Libyan leader.
