Three decades of iron rule by Saddam Hussein appeared to be collapsing in Baghdad today as US troops mopping up fading resistance were met by jubilant Iraqis and looting broke out unhindered.
US central command said it was premature to say the war was won, and some areas of Baghdad were still under control of loyalists to President Saddam. But it was clear his regime was unraveling.
TV pictures showed Iraqis welcoming US forces and chaotic scenes of government buildings being looted without any sign of Iraqi police or troops keeping order.
The United Nations headquarters and shops near the Olympic Committee’s building were ransacked, as were military installations, government buildings and research institutions. Government computers, furniture and even military jeeps were taken from sites around the city.
There were also signs that the Iraqi government’s efforts to sustain its public relations campaign were collapsing after journalists’ minders failed to turn up for their work. Uncensored reports began coming from the capital. State television was off the air.
Resistance seemed to fade as increasing numbers of US troops moved through the city, hunting down small bands of Iraqi fighters. The action followed one of quietest nights in Baghdad since the conflict began.
The fate of President Saddam remained unknown, but his loyalists retained control of the Baghdad neighbourhood targeted by bunker-busting bombs in Monday’s US strike that was intended to kill him.
US troops advanced on central Baghdad from the south-west of the city. Other units steadily expanded their reach, opening a new northern corridor in Baghdad. They secured a military airport, a prison and set fire to a Republican Guard barracks.
Saddam’s hometown targeted
US and UK forces were today focusing on another target – President Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, which is still a stronghold of his loyalist troops. From the south-east, marines secured routes inside the city and pursued small, roving bands of Iraqis armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. In one neighbourhood, numerous civilians flashed thumbs-ups to the US troops.
Meanwhile, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Iraqi Kurdish groups opposing President Saddam, claimed he was already hiding in Tikrit.
Fighting spreads
In other developments this morning:
Kurdish officials said US/Kurdish forces had taken a key mountain from which Iraqis have been defending the northern city of Mosul.
Kurdish forces tightened their ring around Kirkuk yesterday, following heavy coalition air strikes on Iraqi front lines.
Kurdish militia took control of Sekamian plateau, about six miles north of Kirkuk, Kurdish media reported. The area affords a commanding view of the city and the vast oil fields of Iraq’s second most important oil region. The UN has said it expects little oil to flow out of Iraq in the foreseeable future.
MI6 ‘believes Saddam is alive’
The world was waiting to learn whether the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and his two sons were dead or alive following a US-led ”decapitation” strike on Monday when four 2 000lb bombs destroyed a Baghdad restaurant.
The British foreign intelligence agency, MI6, reportedly told the CIA that it believed President Saddam had left the building moments before it was turned into a 60ft crater.
Search for crew of downed US fighter
Coalition rescue teams were today searching for the two-man crew of an American fighter jet shot down near Tikrit, the home town of President Saddam, which is 110 miles north of Baghdad.
Officials at central command in Qatar said the F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft went down just before midnight on Sunday, but the news was withheld as search teams attempted to trace the men.
It was not certain whether the aircraft was shot down and there was no official confirmation of where it was lost. Yesterday an American A-10 ”Warthog” tankbuster aircraft was shot down near Baghdad airport in the first reported downing of a coalition aircraft by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile. The pilot ejected safely and was rescued by ground forces.
Despite the two incidents the US today declared air supremacy over all of Iraq, asserting its warplanes could fly anywhere with impunity.
The battle in Baghdad
US marines were today battling snipers as they fought deeper into the capital from the east. US Marines bridged a river to the south-east of Baghdad yesterday, taking the Rashid military airport and pushing towards the centre of the city.
Iraqi forces resisted, with fighters in buses and trucks sent across the Tigris to attack US troops and snipers took potshots from rooftops.
The marines captured enough ammunition for an estimated 3 000 troops and took a prison where they found US army uniforms and chemical weapons suits possibly belonging to American PoWs.
Some US army units yesterday routed Iraqi fighters from a Republican Guard headquarters inside the capital. Others discovered a 12-room complex inside a cave, complete with white marble floors and fluorescent lighting.
The toll on Iraqi civilians four days after Americans first penetrated the Baghdad outskirts is unknown. But the World Health Organisation said Baghdad’s hospitals were running out of supplies to treat burns, shrapnel wounds and spinal injuries caused by the fighting.
Baghdad hospitals pushed to the limit
Iraqi officials, however, remained defiant, saying Iraq’s forces would never surrender to American forces: ”They will be burnt,” said the information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
Meanwhile, thousands of civilians continued to pour out of the city in buses and pick-up trucks, mostly heading to the north.
US faces criticism over deaths of journalists
The US military faced sharp criticism over assaults that killed three foreign journalists yesterday.
In central Baghdad, a Reuters cameraman and a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco died when an American tank fired on the Palestine hotel. ”The incident … raises questions about the judgment of the advancing US troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad,” Reuters editor-in-chief, Geert Linnebank said.
Tareq Ayyoub, a journalist with Al-Jazeera, died when a US warplane bombed the Arab-language satellite television’s office. Al-Jazeera categorically denied that its Baghdad bureau had been used by Iraqi forces to fire on US troops.
US central command said it fired on the TV office and the hotel after US forces came under ”significant” fire from those buildings.
Sheik to help stop looting in Basra
British forces in southern Iraq are working to restore order in the heavily looted streets of Basra as desperate citizens swarmed water tanker trucks the day after British soldiers claimed Iraq’s second largest city.
British forces also began establishing the country’s first postwar administration yesterday, granting a local sheik power to set up an administrative committee representing the groups in the region.
Chemical Ali bunker searched
British military divers were continuing to search a flooded underground bunker found in a complex they believe was ”Chemical Ali’s” intelligence headquarters for evidence of chemical weapons.
Ali Hassan al-Majid’s compound was virtually destroyed by a bombing raid in 1998 but local Iraqis showed officers a hidden bunker walled off from the main building.
Northern Iraq
In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces tightened their ring around Kirkuk yesterday, following heavy coalition airstrikes on Iraqi front lines.
Kurdish militia took control of Sekamian plateau, about 10km (six miles) north of Kirkuk, Kurdish media reported. The area affords a commanding view of the city and the vast oil fields of Iraq’s second most important oil region.
Bush pledges ‘vital role’ for UN
The US president, George Bush, and the prime minister, Tony Blair, sought to minimise their differences over who should govern and rebuild Iraq yesterday during a meeting in Belfast. Mr Bush pledged a vital role for the UN. – Guardian Unlimited Â