The body of ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been buried at a secret location in the desert, Libyan officials have say Tuesday.

According to a National Transitional Council (NTC) official, the body of Libya`s ex-dictator Muammar Gaddafi, his son Muatassim and a top aide were buried at an unknown location, BBC reported.

A confirmation of the secret burial was sent to press in a text from a military council official in Misrata.

The burial took place at 5:00 a.m. local time with few relatives and officials in attendance, who read prayers over the bodies, spokesman Ibrahim Beitalmal is quoted as saying. Beitalmal said on Monday that the burial would be secret to prevent vandalism.

The ceremony was also promised to be “simple” with “sheikhs attending,” according an NTC official.

“It will be an unknown location in the open desert,” the NTC official said in a previous statement, according to Reuters. He said also that the because of the decomposition of the body the “corpse cannot last any longer.”

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The three bodies were reportedly removed at dawn from the cold storage warehouse in Misrata where they were previously available for public view.

Salem al Mohandes, a security guard at warehouse talked about the removal of the body to the Arabic television station al-Jazeera, but did not confirm the burial.

“[Gaddafi] was transferred and the military council of Misrata took him away to an unknown location. I don’t know whether they buried him or not,” Mohandes said.

The identities of the bodies were confirmed in the autopsies that were performed over the weekend. Dr. Othman el-Zentani who carried out the postmortem examination of the former Libyan leader’s body officially revealed that Col. Muammar Gaddafi died of a gunshot wound to the head.

However, the circumstances surrounding Gaddafi’s death after he was captured remains unclear.