TUNIS (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi is still in Libya and in good spirits, with a powerful army behind him, the ousted leader’s spokesman said on Wednesday.

“The leader is in good health, in high morale … of course he is in Libya,” Moussa Ibrahim told Reuters via a crackling satellite telephone line.

“The fight is as far away from the end as the world can imagine. We are still very powerful, our army is still powerful … we have huge areas of Libya under our control,” he said. “We are gathering our forces.”

Ibrahim declined to say where he himself was.