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LIBYA: From Tripoli compound, surreal images of gold guns

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Footage is still emerging online of rebels seizing control of Moammar Kadafi’s Tripoli compound on Tuesday, including some odd images of fighters with looted gold-plated guns.

In one video, a rebel fighter wearing a scarf around his head and an armored vest, a long gun slung across his shoulder, holds up what appears to be a gold-plated rifle.

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‘God is great,’ he says in Arabic before striding off among the palm trees outside the compound as a compatriot flashes a V-for-victory sign.

Agence France-Presse also reported that a rebel emerging from the complex brandished a gold-plated rifle.

‘Kadafi people killed us with it,’ he said.

Other reports circulated of a gold-plated pistol taken from Kadafi’s fortress-like home.

The sights bring to mind the truckloads of gold-plated guns U.S. troops seized from a Baghdad villa in April 2003.

Many of those guns, which Agence France-Presse described as ‘greasy gold-plated Kalashnikov assault rifles and sniper rifles,’ also carried inscriptions.

‘A gift from the president of the republic, Mr Saddam Hussein.’

But that cache paled in comparison with the uber-gold guns recovered in recent years from Mexico’s drug cartel fighters.

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Last year, Mexican soldiers seized an arsenal of not only gold-plated but also diamond-encrusted weapons that allegedly belonged to allies of the Sinaloa drug cartel, according to the Daily Mail. One of the guns seized from a Guadalajara cartel member’s home featured a gold-plated silencer, another a diamond-tipped trigger.

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-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Video: A Libyan rebel emerges from Moammar Kadafi’s compound in Tripoli with what appears to be a gold-plated gun. Credit: YouTube

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