“I think Qaddafi ... has not left the country. I strongly believe, based on my knowledge of him, that he is fighting with his weapons and alongside his men,” Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi, who is in prison in neighboring Tunisia, said in comments passed by his lawyer. “He will not give up and he will not lay down his weapons until the end,” he said.

The former prime minister is in prison while the Tunisian authorities consider a request from Libya’s National Transitional Council for his extradition.

“I am ready to cooperate with the transitional council but on condition that they drop all requests for extradition and the negative campaigns against me,” he said. “I hope to be a part of the solution in Libya and not part of the problem.”

Meanwhile, Seif Al-Islam, the best-known son of Qaddafi, is leading the final stand of loyalists in Bani Walid against NTC forces, a commander with the new regime said Tuesday.

The town some 170 km southeast of Tripoli and Qaddafi’s coastal hometown of Sirte on the coast to the northeast are the two final strongholds resisting assault by National Transitional Council forces. “We captured a general from the pro-Qaddafi brigades, and he said Seif Al-Islam is in Bani Walid and directing military operations there,” an NTC commander, Adel Benyur, told journalists.

The country’s new rulers have been trying for weeks to take Sirte and Bani Walid, where NTC fighters have been unable to progress further than the outskirts of the vast desert oasis despite nearly a month of combat.

However, an offensive on Bani Walid is imminent, Benyur said. “Most of the town’s inhabitants have left, and that will make it easier for us to attack in the next two days,” he said.

Libya’s de facto Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, told a television channel on Tuesday he would not stay office after the interim government’s forces take control of whole country.

“I will not stay in any official post after the liberation,” Jibril told the Arabic-language satellite channel Al Arabiya.