US forces battled holdout fighters in Baghdad yesterday as rampant looting continued in the capital. To the north, Kurdish fighters reported a major gain, entering the city of Kirkuk near some of Iraq's most productive oil fields.
A day after US officials declared that Saddam Hussein's regime no longer controlled Baghdad, the Central Command said Marines engaged in "intense fighting" with pro-Saddam forces at the Imam Mosque, the Az Amihyah Palace and the house of a leader of the Baath party. One US Marine was killed and up to 20 were wounded.
Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman at Central Command in Doha, said US troops acted on information that regime leaders were trying to organize a meeting in the area. During the operations, he said, Marines were fired on from the mosque compound.
PHOTO: AP
He said he didn't know whether Saddam was among those trying to organize the meeting, and he had no information on any regime leaders being captured or killed.
That engagement aside, the largely one-sided battle for Baghdad appeared nearly over, and US commanders were focusing on plans to oust pro-Saddam forces from their handful of remaining strongholds in the north -- including Saddam's heavily defended hometown of Tikrit and the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk near the northern oil fields.
A convoy of Kurdish fighters drove into an industrial neighborhood of Kirkuk. It was unclear whether any Iraqi forces were still in Kirkuk, and there was shooting on the northwest edge of the city.
A US military official said on condition of anonymity that US special operations forces were attempting to get a US presence into the city "in the interest of regional stability," an apparent reference to Turkey's concerns about Kurds taking over the oil city.
There was no sign of damage to the oil wells, which US officials had said were rigged with explosives. Kurdish forces also took control of the oil-producing city of Khaneqin, 145km north of Baghdad and near the Iranian border.
After Wednesday's celebrations, and after perhaps the quietest night since the war began, Baghdad residents were back out on the streets.
By the thousands, people from poor outlying districts surged into the city center with wheelbarrows and pushcarts for another round of looting, setting fires to some Interior Ministry buildings and making off with anything they could carry. Looted buildings included the German Embassy.
Civilians appeared fearful -- both of US forces and of the possibility that pro-Saddam fighters were still in the city in civilian clothes.
"We're all afraid," Ahmed Jabbar Hashem said while in a car, scanning the street for fighters. "The [Iraqi] soldiers are still out there, we just don't know who they are."
One hotel manager, who declined to give his name, said: "There's one good thing only -- Saddam has disappeared. Everything else is bad. There's no food. there's no water, and everyone is afraid."
In Saddam City, a densely populated Shiite Muslim district in Baghdad, some residents set up roadblocks, confiscated loot being brought back from the city center and sent it to a nearby mosque.
Some US units received word yesterday that they should try to stop the looting, but strategies for doing so remained incomplete.
"There's civilian looting like crazy, all over the place," said Lance Corporal Darren Pickard. "There just aren't enough of us to clear it out."
In many parts of the country, civilians struggled with serious shortages of food, medicine and clean water. Several major international aid groups are demanding swift access to Iraqi civilians without interference from coalition troops.
"We need the independence to move around and do our assessments and we need security," said Kathleen Hunt of Care International. "The images we see on television [of widespread looting] are not very encouraging in terms of lawlessness in certain parts of the country."
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