Dubai, April 11
Consolidating their hold in Iraq, US troops along with Kurdish fighters today took control of the second main northern city of Mosul where widespread looting broke out after an entire corps of the Iraqi army surrendered.Looting also reached epidemic proportions in Baghdad where shopkeepers opened fire on rampaging crowds even as US marines patrolling the city said they were trying to maintain order.
Hundreds of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters joined a US Special Forces unit in entering Mosul in a convoy of 30 to 40 trucks, land cruisers and other all-terrain vehicles after the 5th corps of the Iraqi army gave up.
Widespread looting started in the town and television pictures showed people picking up banknotes from the street after Kurdish fighters broke into Mosul Central Bank, besides beds, furniture and even a roof-top air-conditioning unit being stripped from buildings and carried away.
A central market was set on fire and pictures of the ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were defaced.
The cities of Mosul and Kirkuk have fallen and US special forces are inside the two cities, a US military spokeswoman said today at the war command headquarters in Qatar. “Mosul and Kirkuk have fallen,” Major Rumi Nielson-Green told AFP at the Central Command base.
The fate of Saddam himself continued to be as much a mystery as ever, with still no evidence as to whether or not he was killed in a devastating bombing on Monday, targeting him and his two sons.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell said whether Saddam was alive or dead was immaterial. “Where he is as an individual I don’t know, but it really doesn’t make any difference any more. The regime has been brought down and the Iraqi people are now facing a brighter future,” Mr Powell told Indonesia’s Metro TV.
Two Iraqi children were killed and nine other civilians injured after US Marines opened fire on a vehicle approaching a checkpoint in the southern town of Nasiriya. The US military said five servicemen were wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad last evening but nobody was killed.
“A vehicle approached a checkpoint and detonated. Four Marines and one medical corpsman were injured,” Brig-Gen Vincent Brooks told a news briefing at US Central Command headquarters in Qatar.
The head of the US military Central Command, Gen Tommy Franks, said Saddam Hussein and his sons were either dead or on the run. General Franks made the comments at a news conference after meeting coalition troops at the US command centre at the Bagram airbase, just north of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
He also dismissed allegations that US forces in Baghdad targeted a mosque. US Marines captured the mosque after a seven-hour gunfight in which one marine was killed and 22 other were wounded.
The US forces in Baghdad said they are taking measures to try to end the serious security problems in the city caused by the looting of hospitals, government buildings, shopping centres and private homes.
Twentyfive persons sustained gunshot wounds in looting-related clashes, hospital sources said, while the International Committee of the Red Cross said one of the city’s hospitals was in a “chaotic and catastrophic” state.
Sporadic fighting continued in Baghdad, with Iraqi militia fighters still resisting US forces in the densely-populated western suburbs of the city.
The US military said six
precision-guided bombs were dropped on the home of a half-brother of Saddam Hussein, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti - a former head of the Iraqi secret police - in Ramadi, about 100 km west of Baghdad.
With the focus shifting to the reconstruction of a post-Saddam Iraq, the leaders of France, Germany and Russia were due to discuss in Saint Petersburo how they could influence the aftermath of a war they all fiercely opposed.
Meanwhile, Syria told US officials that it had sealed its border with Iraq to all but humanitarian traffic in response to a flurry of US allegations that Damascus was allowing military equipment and irregular troops to cross into Iraq.
The USA updated its toll from the war, saying that 105 US troops had been killed, seven taken prisoners of war and 11 were missing.
ANKARA: Turkey has been told by the USA that Iraqi Kurdish forces have withdrawn from the oil city of Kirkuk and will also pull out of the nearby city of Mosul, a Turkish government source said on Friday.
Kurdish forces swept into Kirkuk on Thursday, ringing alarm bells in Turkey, which suspects the Iraqi Kurds want to claim the city as the capital of an independent state.
LONDON: In a bid to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, US President W. George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday night launched a new airborne television station with a firm assurance that Iraq would not be run by the USA and the UK or by the UN, but by the people of Iraq and the coalition forces would not stay a day longer than was necessary.
The flying TV station, known as “Towards Freedom” is located on a specially equipped Hercules aircraft called “Commando Solo.”
In his telecast, Mr Bush said: “At this moment, the regime of Saddam Hussein is being removed from power, and a long era of fear and cruelty is ending. American and coalition forces are now operating inside Baghdad - and we will not stop until Saddam’s corrupt gang is gone. The government of Iraq, and the future of your country, will soon belong to you.
Mr Blair said: “Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors, and they will not stay in Iraq any longer than is necessary.”
Agencies
