Explosions and gunfire rocked the streets of Tripoli, reminding fearful residents that Muammar Gaddafi's forces still pose a threat despite being routed by rebels.
Insurgents, jumpy but jubilant and armed with assault rifles, combed the streets for remnants of the regime.
"We are the champions. We've been dying for 42 years and now we are going to live," said Sharif Sohail, a 34-year-old dentist who also took up arms to patrol the city centre.
Gaddafi loyalists still hold parts of the city and have control of the Rixos Hotel, headquarters of the foreign journalists accredited to the regime, preventing any of them from leaving.
Rebels also said Gaddafi snipers are positioned on the road to the airport and that they had lost at least four fighters overnight.
Insurgents manning checkpoints, some wrapped in Free Libya flags and others wearing flackjackets, scrutinised incoming and outgoing traffic by flashlight in neighbourhoods without electricity.
"We are checking every car that passes," Brahim Mukhtar, age 27, told AFP at a main intersection near Souk al-Fatah. "We are guarding the streets."
He said the first nights after rebels surged into the capital on Sunday were characterised by gunfights and "arbitrary shootings" as Gaddafi loyalists drove through residential areas unleashing a hail of lead that forced residents to cower in their homes.
"Before we didn't know who was coming or going. Now we have more control but people are scared there are still Gaddafi forces in the area."
Another rebel perched on a petrol barrel freshly painted with the colours of the Libyan revolution -- red, black and green -- was more optimistic.
"We are almost done with the Gaddafi forces. Only a small number remain. God willing, in the next couple of days the country will be completely clean," he said.
Celebratory gunfire rocked the city on Tuesday when the insurgents breached the walls of Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizya compound in the centre of the capital and sent Gaddafi's forces fleeing.
But later in the night the streets grew eerily empty of residents while rebels and loyalists engaged in deadly cat-and-mouse warfare and fears of Gaddafi snipers on rooftops dampened the jubilation.
The main question concerning residents and rebels alike is, just exactly where is Gaddafi and his family?
Rebel leaders said they had found no trace of him when they stormed his compound.
"Bab al-Azizya is fully under our control now. Colonel Gaddafi and his sons were not there; there is nobody," said military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Bani "No one knows where they are.
Wherever he may be, the strongman is still managing to get his message out.
In a speech carried early Wednesday by the website of a television station headed by his son Seif al-Islam, he said he had abandoned his Tripoli compound in a "tactical withdrawal" after it had been wrecked by NATO warplanes.
"Bab al-Azizya was nothing but a heap of rubble after it was the target of 64 NATO missiles and we withdrew from it for tactical reasons," he said.
The speech gave no indication of where he had gone.
In a later audio message on Syria-based Arrai Oruba television station, Gaddafi urged residents to "cleanse Tripoli of rats."
He also said he had taken to the streets of Tripoli without being recognised.
"I walked incognito, without anyone seeing me, and I saw youths ready to defend their city," the strongman said, without specifying when he did his walkabout.
Rebels and loyalists appeared to trade fire at daybreak in pockets of central Tripoli after two loud explosions shook the area while NATO warplanes overflew the capital.
The head of the rebel National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said fighting in the capital had left more than 400 killed and 2,000 wounded.
He did not say whether this included casualties on both sides.
