Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed in Libya, according to officials and local media reports.
His lawyer, Khaled al-Zaidi, and his political adviser, Abdulla Othman, separately confirmed his death on Facebook on Tuesday.
They did not give details about how the killing happened.
However, Libyan news outlet Fawasel Media quoted Othman as saying that armed men attacked Saif al-Islam Gaddafi at his home in Zintan, a town about 136 kilometres southwest of the capital, Tripoli.
Later, Gaddafi’s political team released a statement saying four masked men broke into his house and killed him.
The team described the attack as a “cowardly and treacherous assassination”.
According to the statement, Saif al-Islam struggled with the attackers before he was killed.
It added that the assailants switched off security cameras in the house in an attempt to hide evidence of the crime.
Reacting to the development, Khaled al-Mishri, former head of the Tripoli-based High State Council, called for an urgent and transparent investigation into the killing.
Although Saif al-Islam never held an official government position, he was widely seen as his father’s closest aide from 2000 until 2011.
That year, Muammar Gaddafi was killed during the uprising that ended his long rule of Libya.
After the fall of Tripoli in 2011, Saif al-Islam was captured while trying to flee the country and was held in detention in Zintan.
He was released in 2017 under a general amnesty and had continued living in the town until his death.
