Updated 1.20pm
A LIBYAN GOVERNMENT spokesperson has said that Muammar Gaddafi’s son is alive and well.
Moussa Ibrahim has told BBC News that Khamis Gaddafi is alive and well contrary to earlier reports that he had been killed in a NATO airstrike on the western town of Zlitan.
Earlier, a spokesperson for the rebels, Mohammad al-Rajali, said their reports had Khamis Gaddafi as being among 33 troops killed in a NATO strike early on Friday in a government operations centre in Zlitan.
NATO says there has been bombing around Zlitan on Thursday. An alliance spokesman in Brussels said Friday that NATO could not verify the report.
Zlitan is 90 mile south east of Tripoli. Khamis runs Libya’s 32nd Brigade, which has been fighting the rebels in Zlitan.
Khamis Gaddafi was severely injured in a US aerial bomb attack on Tripoli in 1986 when he was just three-years-old. His sister was among those killed in the attack which attempted to assassinate Gaddafi.
Earlier this year, a NATO airstrike on Tripoli killed Gaddafi’s other son Saif al-Arab and three of his grandchildren.
- additional reporting from AP
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