It's over! Gaddafi is finished!

Joyful Libyan rebels have overran Muammar Gaddafi's Tripoli bastion, seizing weapons and loot and destroying symbols of a 41-year dictatorship they declared was now over as they set about hunting down the fallen ruler and his sons.

"It's over! Gaddafi is finished," yelled one fighter over a cacophony of celebratory gunfire across the Bab al-Aziziya compound, from where Gaddafi orchestrated eccentric defiance of Western powers and disdain for his own people for four decades.

The Western powers, who backed the revolt with air power, held off from pronouncing victory although a swift return to order is high on their priority list, given fears that ethnic and tribal divisions among the rebels could descend into anarchy that would thwart hopes of Libya resuming oil exports.

Rebel National Council chief Mustafa Abdel-Jalil cautioned: "It's too early to say the battle of Tripoli is over. That won't happen until Gaddafi and his sons are captured."

Armed men broke up a gilded statue of Gaddafi, kicking its face. Some seized the golf buggy the leader often used.

Another rebel sported a heavily braided, peaked military cap of a kind favoured by the colonel. He said he had taken the hat from Gaddafi's bedroom.

Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a rebel commander, said he did not know where Gaddafi or his sons were: "They ran like rats," he said.

There still appeared to be some hostile fire around the city centre as darkness fell and looting continued.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "We're in the death throes of this regime ... But it's still a very difficult and dangerous time. It's not over yet."

The Russian head of the International Chess Federation, who had visited Tripoli in June, said Gaddafi had called him yesterday telling him he was in the capital and was "prepared to fight to the end".

Gaddafi has few places to go and hide. His home town of Sirte is expected to welcome rebel forces shortly.

"It really looks like it's pretty much over," said David Hartwell, a Middle East analyst.

"There might be a few diehards who would keep going until he is captured or killed, but not many. And if Gaddafi didn't have many places to hide before, he has even fewer now."

"House to house! Room to room!" chanted some men, calling for a search of the sprawling complex of bunkers and tunnels in a mocking echo of the words Gaddafi used six months ago when he threatened to crush early stirrings of the Arab Spring revolt.

Inspired by neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt, Libyans who rose up in the east found protection from the air forces of Western governments, who abandoned a short-lived rapprochement with Gaddafi to drive him from power and who now want to see order imposed and a swift restoration of Libyan oil exports.

Abdel-Jalil said Nato bombs had helped his men to breach the walls of the Bab al-Aziziya yesterday.

In the east of the country, government troops were pulling out of areas key to oil production.

The US State Department said it was seeking the immediate release of up to $1.5-billion of frozen Libyan government assets to the rebels.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said he believed Gaddafi was still in Libya and remained a threat. He said the US was monitoring chemical weapons sites in Libya given worries that groups hostile to Western interests could try to seize stocks once accumulated by Gaddafi.