(CBS/AP) TARHOUNA, Libya -Muammar Qaddafi has probably left the Libyan town of Bani Walid and is heading further south with the help of loyalist tribes towards Chad or Niger, a senior military official in Libya's new leadership told Reuters late on Tuesday.
Hisham Buhagiar, who is coordinating efforts to find the former Libyan leader, said reports indicate he may have been in the region of the southern Libyan village of Ghwat, some 594 miles south of Tripoli and 300 km north of the border with Niger, three days ago.
"He's out of Bani Walid I think. The last tracks, he was in the Ghwat area. People saw the cars going in that direction....We have it from many sources that he's trying to go further south, towards Chad or Niger," Buhagiar said in an interview.
Convoys of Qaddafi loyalists, including his security chief, had fled across the Sahara into Niger earlier on Tuesday in a move that Libya's former rebels hoped could help lead to the surrender of his last strongholds.
Still, efforts to negotiate the peaceful handover of one of the most crucial of those bastions, the city of Bani Walid, proved difficult.
