Residents of Tripoli dug makeshift graves to bury the dead as evidence emerged of widespread summary killings during the battle for the Libyan capital.
A week after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the stench of decomposing bodies and burning garbage hung over the city as it faced a major humanitarian crisis due to collapsing water and power supplies, shortages of medicine and no effective government.
In a sign of continuing instability in the city, bursts of heavy machine gun fire could be heard overnight.
The rebels now in control of most of Tripoli vowed to take Gaddafi's home town of Sirte by force if negotiations with loyalists in one of their last strongholds there failed.
As the fighting ebbed away in the capital, more and more bodies were found. Some were Gaddafi soldiers who perished, while others appeared to have been executed. Still more were found in the grounds of a hospital abandoned by its doctors.
The charred remains of around 53 people have been found in a warehouse in Tripoli, apparently opponents of Gaddafi who were executed as his rule collapsed, Britain's Sky News reported on Saturday.
Sky broadcast pictures of a heap of burned skeletons, still smouldering, in an agricultural warehouse, where the victims were apparently prisoners.
And this will continue as the world finds out you can't stop a ground war with air power alone. At some point outside troops are going to have to impose order. Maybe it will be the African Union, maybe the UN, maybe NATO. But someone's going to have to go in.
Hope somebody's working on that. We're not done in Libya, not by a long shot.
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