Tikrit falls to gleeful looting

5.45pm - By ANDREW BUNCOMBE

TIKRIT, IRAQ - American troops rolled into Tikrit yesterday morning (Iraq time) for the final ferocious showdown with the remaining forces of Saddam Hussein's army - in his supposedly loyal home town.

Less than 10 hours later, the people who had lived in what was probably the most prosperous place in Iraq appeared to have already forgotten their beloved leader and were thinking only of themselves.

They laughed and smiled as they made off with the riches which their eyes could barely believe.

The hordes were laden down with gold - gold dishes, gold trays and gold-legged chairs, which they carried away with careless glee.

There seemed hardly a thought for the man whose palace they were looting.

As for the battle it was almost an anti-climax. The big bang that was to have signified the end of the second Gulf war was really little more than a whimper: Tikrit fell perhaps more easily than most of the towns before it.

The American forces had taken few chances with the town 110 miles north of Baghdad.

Expecting a dogged last stand they had pounded the city's defences with nights of airstrikes.

By the time the Americans arrived there was not a lot left for them to fight. A Stars and Stripes was flying from the palace in a matter of hours.

"From Baghdad to here there was nothing," said Corporal David Chahua, of the 1st US Marine Division, whose armoured vehicle was parked up on the long, elegant driveway of one of the several presidential palaces in Tikrit.

All around him Marines were sitting on the floor, washing their socks and shaving their faces on President Saddam's lawn.

"The people were out on the streets of all the little towns we were passing. It was an eerie feeling. One of the guys said it was like a ride at Disneyland."

Typically enough, the US troops who were scattered throughout the town yesterday claimed that the locals were pleased to see them, that they had received cheers and waves and even encountered local people throwing flowers as they approached the home of Saddam's Tikriti clan.

That may have been the case as the columns of metallic green armour rolled through the small towns of sandstone coloured houses on the way here, but in Tikrit itself there seemed little sign of a welcome.

To be fair, the centre of Tikrit was close to a ghost town.

The few locals that were lolling on the street corners or else sitting watching the US troops from the doorways of their closed shops, said the last Iraqi soldiers had pulled out 10 days ago.

The senior Ba'ath Party members who had so prospered under President Saddam's rule had likewise long disappeared - to Syria, people said - or else were holed-up in their up-market homes.

"There were some Syrians and some fedayeen (militia) here - they went yesterday," said Nihad Ali, a friendly young man in an red and black Inter Milan football shirt. "They went home to their countries."

Mr Ali was a medical student who had lived and studied in Tikrit for the last six years. If this was the end of the war, he said, he hoped that life would improve, that people's dreams could be fulfilled, now that President Saddam had been forced out.

But he was not convinced that the securing of Tikrit and the abandoning of the presidential palaces to looters represented the end of the war.

"People think the war will be starting if the Americans and British forces are here for a long time," he warned.

"If they are here for a long time there will be problem. Iraqi people will not keep their mouths shut - they will rise up. People have taken the weapons of the Iraqi army - you cannot imagine how many there are in their houses."

There were plenty of people in Tikrit who echoed his comments.

Yes they were pleased that President Saddam was gone, but what sort of freedom were the Americans now offering in exchange? There was no electricity, no food, no water. "The Americans give us nothing," said Habib Doud, a watchman.

Tikrit is perhaps not the perfect barometer of opinion in Iraq.

The town had always received special treatment and additional grants. The houses here are better than those in other cities, the mosques more ornate, the university seems better maintained while 10 miles out of town the road turns into a highway complete with roadlights - absent on the rest of the road to Baghdad - and pictures of President Saddam every few yards.

As a result one might have expected the criticism of the US and British forces to be sharper here than elsewhere.

This was not apparent yesterday but it was clear that people here, especially the middle-classes, have very real concerns - caught between a past that has been determined by President Saddam and a future they fear will be determined by Washington.

In the ruined palace on the edge of town that had been all but destroyed by allied bombing and the compounds of which were being looted, Hartem Al-Assi was picking his way through the rubble.

A lawyer by training, he had turned to agriculture and lived in Kirkuk. He had never been to the palace before.

"What can I say?" he asked, as he looked around at the endless rooms full of debris and the wrecked plasterwork ceilings now hanging with wires and hideous shards of wire that looked like bizarre stalactites.

"This is our money, the people's money, our petrol money, our agriculture money. Now look. Before, we could not come here, only drive passed quickly. Now it's like this."

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq war