The rebel fighters are now using Bab al-Aziziya as staging area for their operations, loading huge trucks with ammunition and discussing where they need to deploy.
According to reports, Moammar Gadhafi's son Saadi is trying negotiate a cease-fire in Tripoli.
"I have authority" to negotiate, Saadi Gadhafi wrote in an email, according to CNN reporter Nic Robertson.
Robertson, who has been in contact with Saadi, said the businessman is looking to "negotiate a cease-fire to avoid further bloodshed."
'Out a bit in Tripoli discreetly' In an address given from an unknown location and broadcast on the local Al-Ouroba TV, Gadhafi asked: "Why are you letting them wreak havoc?"
Sounding subdued and without his usually fiery rhetoric, Gadhafi said he would fight "the aggression with all strength until either victory or death."
The pro-Gadhafi TV channel earlier quoted the Libyan leader as saying he had left the Bab al-Aziziya compound in a "tactical move" after 64 NATO airstrikes reduced it to rubble.
"I have been out a bit in Tripoli discreetly, without being seen by people, and ... I did not feel that Tripoli was in danger," he said in audio remarks broadcast on al-Rai TV.
Tuesday's ransacking of Bab al-Aziziya, long the nexus of Gadhafi's power, marked the effective collapse of his 42-year-old regime. But with Gadhafi and his powerful sons still unaccounted for — and gunbattles flaring across the nervous city — the fighters cannot declare victory.
Gadhafi's chief government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, also managed to get word out in a phone interview with the same station, promising "we will be back to take Tripoli back."