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New details have emerged on the escape route used by Gaddafi’s family to escape into neighbouring country New details have emerged on the escape route used by Muammar Gaddafi’s family to evade the grasp of the Libyan government and escape into neighbouring Algeria, triggering a diplomatic row over their fate. According to officials in the National Transitional Council, Gaddafi’s second wife, daughter and two sons slipped out of the country along a road through central Libya not yet under NTC control. The escape was made in a convoy of six armoured Mercedes limousines, once part of an extensive government fleet, which departed from the town of Bani Walid, the stronghold of the Libya’s biggest tribe, the Warfallah, where significant remnants of the regime are holding out. Guma al-Gamaty, the NTC’s UK coordinator, said the motorcade was carrying a total of 32 Gaddafi family members, including the ousted leader’s second wife, Safia, daughter Aisha and two sons, Hannibal and Mohammed, and reached the Algerian border on Saturday. “They were kept waiting there for ten to twelve hours while the Algerian government decided what to do. It was the Algerian president himself [Abdelaziz Bouteflika] who authorised their entry,” al-Gamaty said. “We will definitely be seeking their return, and we are cooperating with Interpol to secure their return.” On Monday the Algerian foreign ministry confirmed that the Gaddafi entourage had crossed the border that morning, after denying a report to that effect on Sunday. The crossing is said to have taken place at a remote border post at Tinkarine in the far south east of Algeria, from where the family was taken to the town of Djanet. Aisha – a firebrand defender of the regime throughout the conflict – gave birth to a baby girl in Djanet’s hospital. According to one report, the new baby was named Safiah after her grandmother. An Algerian newspaper, El Watan, said Algerian troops were ordered to seal off the southern border immediately after the crossing. The escape took place while the NTC’s forces were focused on taking Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and last coastal stronghold. The NTC leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has given loyalist forces there until Saturday to surrender or face a military onslaught. But the fact that a conspicuous convoy of six armoured limousines could drive unmolested down the length of the country, from Bani Walid to the pro-Gaddafi bastion at Sebha, on the edge of the Sahara desert, and then west to the Algerian border, indicates that there is a wide swathe of the central Libyan hinterland outside the NTC’s grasp. Al-Gamaty said the NTC now thought that Gaddafi was now “probably” in the Bani Walid area, where the situation was reported fluid but where pro-Gaddafi broadcasts were still being made on the local radio on Tuesday. “He probably thought Bani Walid was a stronger place to be [than Sirte], as it belongs to the Warfallah, the largest tribe in Libya,” he said. The manhunt for Gaddafi and his most powerful sons, Saif al-Islam, Mutassim and Khamis, is moving southwards to the Bani Walid-Sebha desert road. It was being assisted by western intelligence and special forces, including MI6 officers and the SAS. However, they are thin on the ground. Their role is to pick up signals from intercepting equipment not available to the Libyans and identifying their significance with NTC help. Any attempt to detain Gaddafi and his remaining sons would be carried out by Libyans, British sources stressed. The diplomatic row that has blown up in the wake of the family’s escape reflects the tensions caused by the western spread of the Arab spring, as the Algerian government tries to ensure it is not the next domino to fall. It has so far refused to recognise the provisional NTC government in Tripoli. For its part, the NTC is seeking to ensure Algeria does not become a base from which Gaddafi loyalists could mount a counter-revolution. The NTC’s interior minister Ahmed Darrat has reacted angrily to Algeria’s decision to grant members of the Gaddafi family asylum. “From a political point of view this situation is an enemy act,” Darrat told the Guardian. Al-Gamaty said the NTC are particularly anxious to extradite Hannibal and Mohammed Gaddafi for alleged large-scale embezzlement from the shipping and telecommunications industries respectively. An Algerian newspaper, Echorouk, has reported that the government had promised to hand over Muammar Gaddafi should he try to follow his family into Algeria. It quoted President Bouteflika as telling his cabinet that the deposed leader would be handed over to the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity for the brutality with which the first Libyan anti-government protests in February and March were suppressed. However, Algiers showed no readiness to hand back the family members taking refuge on its soil. The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mourad Benmehidi, told the BBC that in the desert regions there was a “holy rule of hospitality” by which his government had accepted the family on humanitarian grounds. Bouteflika was under heavy international pressure to relent and hand back at least some of the Gaddafi clan. “We would hope that there will be full cooperation from Algeria with any judicial process with regard to members of the Gaddafi family,” a European diplomat said. It has been confirmed that damage caused by retreating regime loyalists to the water lines supplying Tripoli was worse than first thought. The main damage is at a pumping station 160km south of the capital, and fixing it could take at least a week. The news comes as a blow for the NTC’s stabilisation plan, with the Islamic festival to mark the end of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, starting in Libya on Tuesday night. However supply lines to Tunisia along the main coastal road were fully open and food and drinking water was entering the capital. Ahead of the Eid festival, many shops opened in the central city for the first time in 10 days, and several shops in the Ben al-Ashura area were this afternoon opening their doors for the first time in six months. “This is what Gaddafi did to me,” said one vendor, Mansour, as he swept out his store which had stood abandoned since 20 February. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Algeria Africa Julian Borger Martin Chulov Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk