Saddam's rule crumbles, looters rampage

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein's rule has collapsed as jubilant Iraqis welcome advancing US forces in Baghdad and rampaging looters attack symbols of his power.

Amid wild scenes, people gutted official buildings, dragging off anything they could carry from airconditioners to flowers.


"People, if you only knew what this man did to Iraq," yelled an old man standing in the road, thrashing at a torn portrait of Saddam with his shoe. "He killed our youth, he killed millions."

Joyful crowds threw flowers and cheered as US Marines drove into the city on Wednesday from the sprawling eastern suburb of Saddam City, home to about two million impoverished Shi'ite Muslims.

"I believe we are on the last leg," Marine Colonel John Toolan told Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, with the US forces on their triumphal ride through the suburbs to the Martyr's Monument, just five km (three miles) from the centre.

"No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. "We love you, we love you."

Some Shi'ites, part of a majority community largely hostile to Saddam's Sunni-led Baathist government, beat their chests as they do during the Shi'ite religious festival of Ashoura.

Television crews watched cheering crowds sack UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel and drive off in UN cars. The building had housed UN aid workers as well as arms inspectors, who were withdrawn before the war began on March 20.

Invasion forces have yet to find any banned chemical or biological arms. Saddam's government denied possessing them.

US troops stood by as looters raided sports shops around the bombed headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, headed by Saddam's elder son Uday, who also leads the Fedayeen militia.

Elsewhere, an Iraqi waving a rifle yelled: "We are Americans, we are USA." Another screamed: "Thank you Mr Bush."

Thousands of US troops moved towards the centre overnight from the west, northeast and south, meeting little resistance.

Residents woke to the sound of birdsong and only occasional shooting after one of calmest nights in three weeks of war.

There were no signs of Iraqi police or uniformed men on the main streets. Information Ministry officials who have shadowed reporters through the conflict were nowhere to be seen.

Even Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who has turned up daily during the war and poured abuse on the Americans, failed to make an appearance.

There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, targeted by US planes that dropped four 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs on a residential area in Baghdad on Tuesday.

"I don't know whether he survived," US President George W. Bush said on Tuesday, adding that Saddam's grip on the "throats of the Iraqi people" was loosening "finger by finger".

British intelligence sources said Saddam probably survived.

The US military said the battle was not over and American troops were still having occasional firefights with disorganised Iraqi forces. "We are still seeing sporadic resistance but when we see it it's fierce," Captain Frank Thorp said.

"I think it's premature to talk about the end of this operation yet," he told Reuters at Central Command in Qatar.

Thorp noted that US-led forces had yet to occupy northern cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace and power base, 175 km (110 miles) north of the capital.

"We continue to strike Tikrit and other cities in the north with air power just as we did in Baghdad, in the south in Basra, Nassiriya, Najaf and other cities," he said.

In central Baghdad, an Iraqi grenade landed near US tanks at a presidential compound on the western bank of the Tigris River. A Reuters reporter said it seemed to come from near the Palestine Hotel used by journalists covering the war.

A US tank killed two journalists at the hotel on Tuesday, one from Reuters, the other from Spain's Telecinco television. Journalists questioned the US military's claim that their forces had been fired on from the hotel.

An Al-Jazeera reporter also died when the station's offices were hit in an air strike.

A British military spokesman said the battle for Baghdad had switched from attacks on military and "regime" targets to a phase of close fighting with local pockets of resistance.

"In pockets I believe there is organised force. A lot of it appears to be local initiative," Group Captain Al Lockwood said.

In the north, anti-Saddam Kurdish leaders claimed their biggest gain yet, capturing a heavily-defended mountain that was the last obstacle protecting the city of Mosul.

On world markets, worries about the postwar US economy outweighed expectations that the conflict would soon end. Stocks fell in Europe and Asia and the dollar lost ground. Oil prices rose on a possible OPEC output cut. Safe-haven assets gained.

Even as the battle for Baghdad appeared all but over, diplomatic obstacles loomed for Bush over the question of governing and reconstructing a post-Saddam Iraq.

He met his main war ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on Tuesday and they endorsed a "vital" UN role when fighting ends, although their plans may fall short of European desires.

Residents of Iraq's second largest city Basra, which fell to British troops this week, complained of a power vacuum as armed men roamed the streets, looting and pillaging.

"We are caught between two enemies, Saddam and the British," said student Osama Ijam.

"Is this what they call a liberation? We want our own government. We want our own security and our own law."

A fledgling US-led civil administration preparing to steer Iraq through the immediate postwar period said it wanted to earn Iraqis' trust by keeping up a steady flow of aid.

"In many ways we are learning as we go," said Major Jeff Jurgensen of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), speaking a day after a team of ORHA officials arrived in the southern port of Umm Qasr to set up operations.

ORHA is headed by retired General Jay Garner, who reports to US war commander General Tommy Franks.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war