Gadhafi Likely Wounded, Out of Tripoli: Italy

Today's hot rumor from Libya: Moammar Gadhafi is wounded and has fled Tripoli for a safer part of Libya, reports Reuters. It's not some anonymous tweet, though: It comes from Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who himself got it from the Catholic bishop in the Libyan capital. "I tend to give credence to the comment of the bishop of Tripoli, Monsignor (Innocenzo) Martinelli," says Frattini. A Gadhafi spokesman dismissed it as "nonsense."

Martinelli has had close contact with the Gadhafi regime and would presumably be in a position to know—he and a Muslim cleric blessed the bodies of Gadhafi's son and grandchildren killed in a recent airstrike. Martinelli could not be reached; his office says the bishop has left Tripoli for Tunis. As for the images that surfaced yesterday purporting to show the Libyan leader in the capital: "I strongly doubted that those images were taken on that day and above all in Tripoli," says Frattini. (More Moammar Gadhafi stories.)