Three of Colonel Gaddafi's sons are believed to be holed up in military camps around 100 miles south-east of Tripoli, where at least two of them are thought to be preparing for a last stand against rebels who plan to overrun them on Saturday.
The three sons, Saadi, Mutassim and Saif al-Islam, have been in the town of Bani Walid for one week and were joined at one point by their fugitive father. Rebel leaders are divided on whether Muammar Gaddafi has remained with his sons, or headed south to the regime stronghold of Sabha in southern Libya.
Commanders in the town of Tahouna say they have received a stream of information from residents of Bani Walid over the past three days confirming that Mutassim and Saif al-Islam are in town. Saif al-Islam has vowed to fight to the end.
His father yesterday released an audio tape claiming that Libya will burn and insisting he will not surrender.
Separately, the commander of the Tripoli Military Council, Abdulhakim Belhaj, told the Guardian on Thursday that Saadi Gaddafi, who had been trying to negotiate his surrender and a transition of power to the rebel leadership, was "definitely in Bani Walid".
With rebels closing in, Saadi Gaddafi has twice called Belhaj this week looking for a way out of the crisis that has ended his father's 42-year regime. "I gave him my word that we will treat him well and that no one is going to hurt him and that he would receive a fair trial," said Belhaj. "I am waiting for his reply."
In the town of Tahouna – around 60 miles north of Bani Walid – from where rebels are preparing an attack, Colonel Abdul Razak al-Nadouli said securing all escape routes was proving difficult. "They can run to the desert or into the valleys if they want," he said. "They can even get to Sirte. We have good information about Saif al-Islam and Mutassim and we think that Muammar was there too, but we are not sure where he is now. Maybe Sabha."
Nadouli's suggestion that the desert city was Gaddafi's destination was supported yesterday by the former bodyguard of his son, Khamis. Khamis is believed to have been killed in a rebel ambush on his way to Bani Walid on the same day his other brothers arrived there.
The Gaddafi clan set off from the Salahedin military base in south Tripoli last Friday, with Gaddafi's 25-car convoy leaving first and Khamis leaving soon after. The guard, Abdul Salam Tahrar, told the Guardian that Gaddafi's guards told him they were travelling to Sabha.
Attention is focusing on possible escape routes for Gaddafi. With the road through Gharyan, south of the capital, under rebel control since 21 August, speculation is intensifying that the Gaddafi regime's greatest engineering feat, the Great Manmade River project, which runs from just south of Bani Walid to not far north of Sabha, could have aided his escape.
The river project, which supplies water to much of the parched country, is long suspected to have had a dual purpose, as a bunker network or a carriageway. Engineers who worked on the project during the 1990s say it was large enough to carry military vehicles down its entire length.
Using such a route, if it were possible, would have the added advantage of avoiding Nato surveillance aircraft, which have joined the hunt for Gaddafi, who swept to power on 1 September 1969 in a military coup.
Adding further credence to the escape route theory is the fact that regime loyalists have switched off the water supply to Tripoli from a site around 400 miles south, which remains under loyalist control.
Meanwhile, Nadouli said he had been in regular contact with leaders of the Warfillah tribe in Bani Walid, who he believes are not inclined to fight to defend the Gaddafi sons.
"80% of the people there don't like Muammar," he said. "Between each of them they are discussing not fighting. They may let them run."
He said the Gaddafis have a force of 500-600 protecting them. The rebels plan to throw at least 2,000 soldiers into any battle for the town.
In Tripoli, Belhaj has opened an operations room to gather information about Gaddafi's movements. For him, the hunt for the dictator has involved some extraordinary shifts in allegiance.
In 2004, Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Malaysia, then taken to Thailand and allegedly tortured before being handed over to the Gaddafi regime and jailed for seven years in Tripoli's infamous Abu Salem prison, on suspicion – later proved false – of being a member of al-Qaida.
He was freed last year in an amnesty that Gaddafi offered to Islamists whom he had long seen as a threat to his power base. Belhaj now leads the hunt from the capital for Gaddafi and senior members of his regime – with the support of the US military and the CIA.
"I will not call for and do not need revenge," he said on Thursday. "(The rendition) was a stupid act and an over-reaction to what happened on September 11.
"The CIA still came to visit me in a Libyan cell and by then they were convinced that I was not al-Qaida. The Libyan was trying to convince them that I was."
Pressed on his attitude to Nato and the US, he said, "We are the sons of today (not the past). We are grateful for the stand that the whole international community took against the Gaddafi regime."
