A huge portrait of Muammar Gaddafi marks the entrance of Bani Walid: 10 chaotic years since the Libyan dictator's death, residents of the desert town still hanker for his rule.
ADVERTISING
"Muammar Gaddafi is a symbol," said resident Mohamed Dairi, in his fifties. "We will always support him."
Unfinished concrete buildings litter the town of some 100,000 people on the edge of the Sahara desert, many of them scarred by bullets and mortar rounds fired during over a decade of conflict.
Rebels killed Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011, months into the NATO-backed rebellion that ended his four-decade rule.
Residents of Bani Walid, a stronghold of the Warfala tribe -- the country's biggest and a key pillar of Gaddafi's rule -- had backed him to the bitter end.
