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Looters rule Baghdad

AGENCIES, Baghdad
Looting surged and government buildings were set on fire across Baghdad yesterday while US troops concentrated more on fighting pockets of resistance than on keeping order.
Tens of thousands of people -young and old, men and women -roamed the city in the second round of
looting to hit Baghdad since Wednesday, with American forces making little or no effort to stop them as they carried off TV sets, refrigerators and carpets.
The German embassy and the French cultural centre in Baghdad were also looted. Dozens of people
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who set about seizing everything they could find entered the embassy in Karada Street in central Baghdad.
Many of the looters moved into the city centre from the poor outlying districts with wheelbarrows and pushcarts, intent on getting their share of the booty.
The looters drove tractors, pick-up trucks and trailers and even a large bus up to a large villa belonging to Tareq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister. They stole everything from furniture and paintings to chandeliers and curtains, and stripped the electrical wires from the villa's main switchboard. Aziz's library was also ransacked.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was concerned about the looting of hospitals.
"The hospitals themselves have come under attack for the purpose of looting. There are lots of people carrying weapons around and they make it very difficult for civilians in need of medical care to actually reach the hospitals," ICRC spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin in Baghdad told CNN.
Meanwhile, smoke billowed from buildings across the city. US Marines said Iraqi holdouts were setting fire to their own quarters and blaming the Americans. In at least one case, however, looters were seen setting fire to some buildings in the Interior Ministry complex.
US troops occupied the Oil Ministry. But the nine-storey Ministry of Transport building was gutted by fire, as was the Iraqi Olympic headquarters, while the Ministry of Education was partially burned. Near the Interior Ministry, the office building of Saddam's son Odai stood damaged, its upper floors blackened.
A building on fire near the Interior
Ministry was rocked by deafening explosions apparently caused by ammunition and rockets stashed inside. The blasts went on for more than 15 minutes.
In and around the capital, skirmishes flared between US forces and Iraqi holdouts, and bursts of gunfire and explosions continued to echo through the city nearly a day after the people of Baghdad danced in the streets over the fall of Saddam.
Around the city, looters hit stores and government installations, including the Irrigation Ministry, the Transport Ministry, the Air Force officers club, the government computer centre, the Olympic hospital and state laboratories.
In the city centre, donkey-drawn and horse-drawn carts were seen loaded with office furniture, TV sets, appliances and carpets.
A house in southern Baghdad belonging to Saddam's notorious cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid -- known as "Chemical Ali" -- was also robbed.