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Baghdad slips from Saddam's grip

Troops roll into the heart of capital without resistance; civilians plunder buildings

STAR DESK
President Saddam Hussein's 24-year regime lost its iron grip over large swaths of Baghdad yesterday, as US tanks barrelled into city centre amid jubilant cheers of Iraqis after 21 days of invasion attack.
People gutted official buildings, dragging off anything they could carry from airconditioners to flowers.
The fate of Saddam Hussein is unknown. Information Ministry officials were nowhere to be seen.
Even Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who has turned up daily during the war, failed to make an appearance.
Although there were no signs of Iraqi police or uniformed men on the main streets, the US military said 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.
The overriding image, however, was of men, women and children running and dancing, apparently unrestricted, cheering the invaders.
One elderly man tore down a picture of Saddam in his trademark military beret and sunglasses. In the street, he took off his sandal and used it to beat the image, while others ran at the picture and kicked it.
The United Nations headquarters and shops near the Olympic Committee's building in Baghdad
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were ransacked, as were military installations and research institutions. Government computers, furniture and even military jeeps were taken from sites around the city.
US marines helped bring down a giant statue of Saddam in a central square of Baghdad to the applause of Iraqis standing below. The statue toppled when a rope tied to it was hooked up to a military vehicle that backed away.
US troops advanced on central Baghdad from the southwest 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 Republican Guard barracks.
US marines seized what they described as a headquarters of Saddam's secret police in Baghdad, a Reuters correspondent who entered the building reported.
Sean Maguire said the deserted Directorate of General Security (DGS) in the east of the capital was seized yesterday morning. The site was being looted by locals when the marines arrived, he said. The building housed the political directorate of the DGS, tasked with investigating political crimes, said US forces.
The offices looked as if they had fallen into disuse. Some rooms were filled with files, some contained gas masks and other equipment. The site appeared to be made up mainly of administrative offices rather than a jail complex, Maguire said.
From the southeast, 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.
Unconfirmed reports said residents among the heavily-armed population of the quarter had forced out the Fedayeen Saddam militiamen before arrival of the US troops overnight.
In other parts of the capital, Baghdadis tore up a giant portrait of Saddam, men brandished Kalashnikov rifles as they signalled their delight at the regime crumbling.
Looters on the loose
Rampaging looters attacked symbols of Saddam's power. Iraqis were filmed carrying looted chairs, sacks of grain and other supplies on their backs. In Saddam City, Baghdad's teeming Shiite suburb, people were seen breaking into shops and homes to steal furniture, food, electrical equipment and carpets.
In the north of the capital, citizens rampaged through the interior and irrigation ministries, gutting the offices, reporters said.
Sporadic shooting
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 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.
Humanitarian fears
Thousands of civilians yesterday continued to pour out of Baghdad in buses and pick-up trucks, most of them
heading north.
The toll on Iraqi civilians four days after US forces first penetrated the outskirts of Baghdad is unknown. But the World Health Organisation said the capital's hospitals were running out of supplies to treat burns, shrapnel wounds and spinal injuries caused by the fighting.
In the north
US special forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters seized a strategic hilltop near the major Iraqi-held city of Mosul early yesterday.
But coalition rescue teams were searching for the two-man crew of an American fighter jet downed near the northern Iraqi stronghold of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam, a possible bolthole should choose to flee the capital.
In the south
British forces have appointed a local sheikh to take leadership of Basra, where looting threatened to run out of control. Militarily, they were consolidating new positions around Basra following their furthest incursion north.
Officials said the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment had reached Al Qurnah -- said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden and the birthplace of mankind -- after crossing the River Euphrates.
The troops were welcomed by cheering crowds of local people in the area, populated by Ma'dan, marsh Arabs.
Meanwhile, British forces in Iraq's second city were continuing efforts to restore law and order after impoverished Iraqis ripped apart the city's buildings during chaotic scenes of looting.