Mosul captured without fight: •Iraqi forces abandon city •looting, arson break out all over
BAGHDAD, April 11: US and Kurdish forces completed their conquest of northern Iraq on Friday by taking Mosul, but Baghdad and other captured cities descended into anarchy.
The fall of Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, left Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, 175kms north of Baghdad, as the last significant target for the United States.
US bombers continued to pound positions around the town, but Mr Saddam’s whereabouts were not known.
In Baghdad, Mosul and the southern city of Basra, law and order crumbled as pent-up passions spilled on to the streets.
In Baghdad, gunmen in the east-side slums battled paramilitaries loyal to the former president on Thursday night, US military sources said.
Throughout the day, armed men roamed the streets, robbing buildings and hijacking cars.
An eyewitness said he came across a youth wearing a red baseball cap back-to-front, brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle and waiting for a passing car to hijack.
“He let me go by but shot the driver of the next vehicle, dragged him out and drove away in the truck,” he recalled.
“Is this your liberation?” screamed one shopkeeper at the crew of a US Abrams tank as youths helped themselves to everything in his small hardware store.
At the military intelligence headquarters, crowds of desperate Iraqis hacked through concrete floors looking for relatives they believed were trapped in dungeons.
But the thrill of reaching fathers, brothers, friends turned into disappointment. US soldiers said the cells were empty.
“They must be all dead, God rest their souls,” said one sobbing woman who had been searching for her brother since 1980.
ANARCHY: In Mosul there were no military clashes after Iraqi forces abandoned the city, just crowds in a frenzy of arson and plunder, stripping buildings and torching a market.
The anarchy in Iraq’s main cities, and the murder of a religious leader on Thursday in the holy city of Najaf, highlighted the problems US troops face in restoring public order after the end of hostilities.
“The United States have neither the will nor the capacity to rein in the disorder in Iraq,” said Bruno Tertrais, senior fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.
“Today there are not nearly enough forces in the towns. Secondly, they are tired after three weeks of war.”
Analysts have also said US forces are reluctant to perform policing missions, but a US official disagreed.
“Now we are a little bit out of our comfort zone, but we’re not unprepared or untrained,” Lt Col Jim Chartier, commanding officer of the US Marines’ Tank Battalion, said while talking to newsmen near Baghdad’s Martyrs’ Monument.
“If I need to provide security for a grocery store so they don’t get robbed, I’ll do it. On the other hand, there’s still people out there who want to kill us, so we can’t let our guard down,” he said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it is too early to declare victory in Iraq, but he said Saddam Hussein’s control of the country has “all but disappeared”.
US commander General Tommy Franks said Saddam and his inner circle were “either dead or running like hell”.
Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at a briefing in Qatar US troops were issued with a list of 55 people to be captured or killed amid signs Iraqi leaders may be trying to flee abroad.
In Mosul, 390kms north of Baghdad, the US military said the entire Iraqi Fifth Corps had surrendered following negotiations with Western officials, although it was not clear how many men were involved.
“There was a written document that was signed today,” said Lt Mark Kitchens at war headquarters in Qatar.
Television showed hundreds of men walking out of the city at the start of a long trek south to their hometowns.
“We’re in the process of deciding whether they’ll become (prisoners of war) or just go home,” Captain Frank Thorp said.
KIRKUK: Troops of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade moved to control the strategic northern prize of Kirkuk one day after it was captured by Kurdish guerillas and US special forces.
US soldiers began spreading through the nearby oilfields, which provide 40 per cent of Iraq’s oil revenue.
The Kurds’ withdrawal from their traditional capital is designed to calm fears in Ankara that they could use the city’s wealth to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands by Turkey’s large Kurdish minority.
HEALTH CRISIS: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Baghdad’s medical system had all but collapsed due to combat damage, looting and fear of anarchy. It said in a statement, few medical or hospital support staff were reporting for work and patients had either fled or been left without care.
A witness said bodies were being buried in hospital gardens and corpses rotted by roadsides or in cars blown up by coalition forces as they captured Baghdad earlier in the week.
“This is going to cause a major problem for sanitation and the water system,” a US army engineer said.
“The water table is very low here and what goes in the ground, goes in the water,” he said. —Reuters
BAGHDAD, April 11: US and Kurdish forces completed their conquest of northern Iraq on Friday by taking Mosul, but Baghdad and other captured cities descended into anarchy.
