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First day sans Saddam

Baghdad wakes up to new dawn

AFP, Baghdad
Baghdad woke Thursday to its first day in more than two decades free from the iron grip of Saddam Hussein, a day after the world watched jubilant crowds cheer US forces rolling into the Iraqi capital.
However a series of loud blasts from the edge of the city during the morning provided a reminder of the dangers still lurking in Iraq.
"The game is over," said Baghdad's UN ambassador to the United Nations, the first top Iraqi official to concede defeat in the US-led war to "liberate" a nation from tyranny and strip Saddam of weapons of mass destruction.
The end came in a day of fastmoving, dramatic events capping three weeks of war. US tanks and troops swarmed Wednesday over the sprawling city of five million people, meeting little resistance.
To wild cheers and applause, US Marines used a tank recovery vehicle to help a crowd of Iraqis topple a giant statue of Saddam over Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square -- a symbol of the "great leader's feared, omnipresent rule.
In Washington, President George W. Bush welcomed the news from Baghdad but the White House warned "the war is not over."
A reminder crashed out early Thursday when a series of loud blasts were heard in Baghdad from the city's outskirts, while planes could be heard flying overhead.
The blasts started at 7:30 am (0330
GMT), but it was uncertain whether they were caused by airstrikes, an AFP correspondent reported.
In stark contrast to the stream of defiant declarations from Iraq over the past three weeks, there was not a whisper on Wednesday.
Mystery surrounded Saddam's fate and nothing has been heard from him since a US bomber on Monday obliterated the building in Baghdad where he was believed to be with his two sons.
At the White House, Fleischer said Saddam had "missed his chance" to go peacefully into exile, hinting the administration believed the Iraqi leader was still alive.
But there was no such hesitation on the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday, where crowds dismissed Saddam with chants of "Traitor!" "Torturer!" "Dictator!"
"We're ecstatic to get rid of him after all these years of war and deprivation," said resident Dinkha Khosina, who rushed to greet US troops.
In the southern city of Basra, largely under British control since Monday, British troops were struggling to contain rampant looting, murders and petty crime.
The growing anarchy gave urgency to British plans to set up an interim committee drawn from locals to run the city and restore some order.
Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi meanwhile complained that the team chosen by the United States to administer post-Saddam Iraq was too slow in arriving.
But Rumsfeld countered that interim administrator Jay Garner, a retired US general, would not move into Baghdad until he and his team could do so safely.
And a senior US official said Washington was planning a meeting of Iraqi exiles and local leaders as early as next week as a first step towards organising an interim government.
Aid agencies had warned on Tuesday that the high casualties of bombings and fighting had left the capital's hospitals low on medical supplies and stretched to the limit.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said a Canadian staff member missing since a shooting incident in Baghdad had been found dead, as it temporarily suspended aid deliveries.
US troops shot an ambulance transporting wounded in downtown Baghdad, killing two Iraqis and wounding three others, a Belgian doctor told AFP.
"When I went up to a US officer to denounce such behaviour, he just said: 'The ambulance could contain explosives,'" Geert Van Moorter said.
To the north of Baghdad, warplanes struck Iraqi positions around Saddam's home town of Tikrit, another potent symbol of his 24-year rule. US forces continued to move north towards the city that lies 200 km north of Baghdad, a US military spokesman said.
But there was still no sign of the weapons of mass destruction that Washington assured Saddam possessed -- a claim it used to justify the invasion.