NIGER

Nigeria's military said on Monday they had detained a small oil tanker and arrested 46 people trying to ship illegally refined oil products, pursuing a fight against an underground industry worth hundred of millions of dollars a year.

For Libya, it is a form of liberation and rebirth, following the death of former dictator, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The new rulers have made a statement, by leaving Gadhafi's body, for the third day, in Misrata. The whole scene looked quite like a carnival, as people lined up to look at the decomposing bodies of Gadhafi, his son and an army chief.

Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi is shocked and outraged by the vicious brutality shown towards his father and brother Mo'tassim and said it showed no one connected to the former government would receive a fair trial in Libya, Saadi's lawyer said on Sunday.

The death of Moammar Gadhafi has definitely clarified one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the global oil market: There is now one fewer issue to hinder production security in a host of oil hot spots.

The dictator's once-powerful family is now scattered to various fates.

Timeline: Libya's civil war nears end

Celebratory bursts of gunfire and fireworks lit up the skies over Tripoli early Thursday as word spread that Libyan government fighters had captured Moammar Gadhafi's son Mo'tassim in Sirte.

Libyan government fighters captured Moammar Gadhafi's son Mo'tassim in Sirte Wednesday after he tried to escape the battle-torn city in a car, the National Transitional Council said.

Libya's National Transition Council said they are ready to declare victory after eight months of revolution, once they have captured the city of Sirte.

Nigeria experienced an explosion of violence over the weekend, with a number of militant attacks occurring all over the country. On Sunday, 23 people were killed when around 70 attackers stormed the village of Ligyado in Zamfara State armed with AK47 rifles, daggers, machetes and sticks.

Gunmen shot and hacked to death 18 people in a village in northwest Nigeria on Sunday, police said.

His whereabouts had been a mystery for weeks.

Moammar Gadhafi is believed to be hiding near the southwestern town of Ghadamis near the Algerian border under the protection of Tuareg tribesmen, a senior Libyan military official said.

Diehard loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi threw rockets, mortars and heavy gunfire at Libyan fighters who pushed into two besieged towns on Friday in a bid to end months of civil war and capture key figures from the old ruling system.

Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron landed in Libya to a heroes' welcome on Wednesday, promising help for the new rulers that French and British air power helped to install and being told the favour may be repaid in business contracts.

Gunmen shot dead four people in a bar in the northeastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri in the latest strike by a radical Islamist sect, police said on Tuesday.

Speculations about Gadhafi's son Saadi's refuge in Niger finally ended with the confirmation of the news by Marou Adamou, Niger's justice minister and government spokesman on Sunday.

Forces of Libya's new rulers were meeting ferocious street-by-street resistance Monday morning in Bani Walid from Moammar Gadhafi's forces, but were edging toward his birthplace of Sirte.

Libya's new rulers said they were holding back an assault on one of the last bastions loyal to Muammar Gaddafi but were edging towards the ousted ruler's birthplace of Sirte.

Libya's new rulers said Sunday night they were holding back an assault on one of the last bastions loyal to Moammar Gadhafi but were edging toward Sirte. Niger said Sunday one of the fugitive former leader's sons, Saadi Gadhafi, had turned up there.

Interpol has issued a Red Notice for Moammar Gadhafi, the deposed Libyan leader who is currently in hiding. The international policing agency is reaching out to law-enforcement offices around the world with the hope that Gadhafi will be found and eventually extradited to the International Criminal Court for trial.