Moammar Gadhafi's body has been stashed in a commercial freezer in Misrata as Libyan officials try to decide where it will be buried, and by whom.
Cheering crowds took to Misrata's streets throughout the day Friday to commemorate the death of their former dictator, CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Martin Seemungal reported.
Residents there "feel as though this city is a symbol of the struggle because the siege went on here for so long -- and actually we're seeing a bit of a struggle over the body of Moammar Gadhafi and his son Mutassim," Seemungal said Friday.
Despite the wishes of the National Transitional Council, Seemungal said the military council in Misrata would like to keep control of Gadhafi's body because they "believe they worked hard for it, they made a great deal of sacrifice for it."
Hundreds of Libyans lined up at the shopping centre where the freezer is located on Friday, jostling for the chance to view the blood-streaked corpse.
Entry wounds to Gadhafi's head and chest are clearly visible, according to an Associated Press reporter who saw the body laying in the freezer on Friday.
Gadhafi died Thursday, after spending the last weeks of his life on the run. He was 69 years old.
Revolutionary fighters caught up with the long-time Libyan dictator in his hometown of Sirte, where he was found hiding in a drain pipe.
Video has proven that Gadhafi was alive when captured, but he did not survive for long.
NTC Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said a coroner's report has determined that Gadhafi was killed by a bullet to the head and that he died while en route to a field hospital.
Shammam said Gadhafi was injured at the time of his capture, but it is still not clear when he was hit by the bullet the claimed his life.
"It seems like the bullet was a stray and it could have come from the revolutionaries or the loyalists," Shammam said Friday.
"The problem is everyone around the event is giving his own story."
Shammam said the NTC expects to know more when it receives a report from a minister who was sent to Misrata the day Gadhafi died.
Senior NTC member Mohamed Sayeh said that for now, it has so far been decided that Gadhafi will be buried according to Islamic tradition and he will not have a public funeral.
The UN human rights office has called for an investigation into Gadhafi's death, citing the video that showed he was alive when initially captured.
"The two cellphone videos that have emerged, one of him alive, and one of him dead, taken together are very disturbing," UN spokesperson Rupert Colville said Friday.
Reuters reported that Gadhafi's surviving widow echoed that request on Friday.
Observers within Libya say that with Gadhafi dead and his regime in ruins, the National Transitional Council must now help the people who have lived through the chaos of the past eight months.
"Right now you have freedom fighters in the hospital, you have schools that need to get started," said Khadija Ali, a reporter with the Tripoli Post.
"It's more a fact of we need to get on with life before we start talking about any political issues."
That normalization process is already underway, with the NTC's interim leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, expected to formally declare liberation on Saturday.
Beyond the immediate steps the NTC must take to restore order in Libya, the interim government harbours an ambition plan to hold elections in eight months -- a rapid development that many experts are doubtful can be achieved in such a short period of time.
Janice Gross Stein, the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, said the NTC plan leaves just eight months to write a constitution and organize a vote for the first time in decades.
"This is a long, hard road in a country without, truly a single national institution, not even an army," Stein said in an interview Friday morning.
With files from The Associated Press
