Fighters supporting Libya’s interim government have raced into the eastern outskirts of Sirte backed by NATO warplanes and are fighting street-to-street battles with loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi in his home town.

Tunisian officials have reportedly arrested former Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi after he crossed the border into the country.

A suicide bomber driving a truck attacked an advance Nato combat post in central Afghanistan, wounding 89 people including 50 American soldiers, the US Army said Sunday.

Interpol has issued a red notice – its highest arrest alert – for Muammar Gaddafi as the hunt for the former Libyan leader intensifies.

At least 20 people have been killed and several wounded in suicide bombings near a government compound in the Pakistani city of Quetta bordering Afghanistan.

Muammar Gaddafi has probably left the Libyan desert town of Bani Walid and is heading further south with the help of loyalist tribes towards Chad or Niger, Reuters news agency quoted a senior military official in Libya’s new leadership as saying.

Rebels overran Muammar Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli Tuesday, raising their flag and ripping the head off his statue as they celebrated a symbolic, if not yet real, end to the strongman’s iron-fisted 42-year rule.

Sustained automatic gunfire and a series of explosions rang out in Tripoli overnight as rebels launched efforts to permanantly free the Libyan capital from Muammar Gaddafi’s grasp, according to reports from witnesses and rebels.

Libyan rebels have reportedly taken control of the centre of the oil-rich eastern town of Brega, just 50km east of Tripoli.

Ethnic and criminal violence blamed on gangs has killed 65 people in Pakistan’s financial capital of Karachi, with police the latest victims shot dead in a brazen ambush, officials said Saturday.