New regime troops captured Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday as they overran the last pocket of resistance from loyalists in his hometown Sirte, bringing their seven-month uprising to a triumphant conclusion.

Celebrations erupted in towns across Libya as news spread that the autocrat who ruled the country   for 42 years was finally in custody.

“He has been captured,” commander Mohamed Leith told a news agency.

“He is badly wounded, but he is still breathing,” Leith said, adding that he had seen Muammar Gaddafi himself and that he was wearing a khaki uniform and a turban.

Libyan TV channel “Libya lil Ahrar” carried the same news but a pro-Muammar Gaddafii television website insisted the strongman remained at liberty.

“The reports peddled by the lackeys of NATO about the capture or death of the brother leader, Muammar Gaddafi, are baseless,” said Al-Libiya television.

Kadhafi “is in good health,” it insisted.

Ali Errishi, who served as Kadhafi’s minister of immigration before defecting to the rebellion, said he was “confident” the strongman was in custody.

“That is the end of a long ordeal of the Libyan people,” he told the Al-Jazeera news channel.

NTC fighters who had fought in the bloody seven-month conflict that toppled the veteran despot at a cost of more than 25,000 lives, were jubilant at the news of his capture.

Pick-up trucks blaring out patriotic music criss-crossed the streets of Sirte, as fighters flashed V for victory signs and chanted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest).

A lot of pickup trucks are playing the new national anthem and other revolutionary songs.