Gadhafi's autopsy reveals he was shot in head.
Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya’s interim rulers said.
His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Doctors completed the autopsy of Moammar Gadhafi on Sunday, with the chief pathologist confirming the former Libyan leader died of a gunshot wound to the head.Dr. Othman el-Zentani would not disclose additional findings, such as whether the findings revealed if Gadhafi suffered the wound in crossfire or at close-range.Zentani said the report will now go to the attorney general's office before it is released to the public.
Doctors performed the autopsy at a Misrata hospital in the presence of officials from the prosecutor's office, Zentani said.
No foreign or independent officials were present, he said.Autopsies were also conducted on the bodies of Gadhafi's son, Mutassim, and his former defense minister, Abu Baker Yunis.
The three bodies would likely return to a cold storage unit at a Misrata meat market for public viewing, Zentani said.
All weekend long, long lines have people turned up to view the corpses.
Gadhafi's death Thursday solidified the power of the National Transitional Council, which will mark the country's liberation on Sunday in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the uprising started.
Gadhafi's family issued a statement Friday calling on the United Nations and Amnesty International to push Libya's new leadership "to hand over the bodies of the martyrs of their tribe so they can be buried according to Islamic rites," a pro-Gadhafi TV station reported.
Libyan and world powers wanted to capture Gadhafi and prosecute him for war crimes.
The U.N. human rights office and activist groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have called for a probe into Gadhafi's death amid questions over the final moments of the late Libyan strongman's life. They want to know whether Gadhafi was killed in crossfire or executed by fighters.
Mahmoud Jibril, chairman of the NTC's executive board, said Gadhafi was captured alive and unharmed Thursday as fighters overran his hometown of Sirte. But a gunbattle erupted between the fighters and Gadhafi loyalists as his captors attempted to load him into a vehicle, Jibril said, leaving Gadhafi with a wound to his right arm.
More shooting erupted as the vehicle drove away, and Gadhafi was shot in the head, dying moments before arriving at a hospital in Misrata, Jibril said, citing the city's coroner.
Human Rights Watch is calling for an internationally supervised autopsy and an investigation into the death, and one of its officials said it is unlikely that Gadhafi was killed in crossfire.
Peter Bouckaert, the group's emergencies director, told CNN that fighting had ended when Gadhafi was cornered in a drainage ditch. He said crowds beat Gadhafi in what was a "humiliating end" for the former dictator.
"When he left the area, he was very much alive," Bouckaert said. "There's no reason why he should have been subjected to this kind of mob justice."
UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva on Friday that there were "at least two cell-phone videos, one showing him alive and one showing him dead."
"Taken together, these videos are very disturbing," he said.
"We believe there is a need for an investigation and more details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in the fighting or after his capture.
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