Saddam's rule collapses in Baghdad, scenes of joy

9.15am

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein's rule over Iraq collapsed as US troops swept into the heart of Baghdad last evening (NZ time) and helped jubilant residents celebrate by toppling a huge statue of their ousted leader and dragging its severed head through the streets.

Amid chaotic scenes of rejoicing, looting and scattered gunfire, Iraqis danced and trampled on the fallen six-metre high metal statue in contempt for the man who had held them in fear for 24 years in which the country sustained massive human losses and economic damage from three wars.

But US control over the city was still not complete. As night fell, the streets emptied and tank and artillery fire sounded on the western bank of the Tigris river.

There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, targeted by US planes that bombed a western residential area of the city on Monday. A CIA official said he did not know if the Iraqi leader had survived the attack.

US-led forces have yet to occupy northern cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace and tribal power base, 175km north of the capital.

US and Kurdish forces dislodged Iraqis from a mountain used to defend Mosul, their biggest victory yet in the north.

Earlier, in scenes recalling the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraqis hacked at the marble plinth of Saddam's statue with a sledgehammer. Youths hooked a noose around the statue's neck and attached the rope to a Marine armoured vehicle, which dragged it over.

The crowd swarmed over what was left of the statue, waving their arms and fists in the air and dancing for joy.

The scenes came three weeks after President George W Bush began the war to topple Saddam and seize control of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Saddam's government denied having any such weapons and so far there is no definitive word that any have been found, although US experts are testing some suspicious substances discovered earlier this week.

The war has so far cost 96 US dead, 30 British dead and unknown thousands of Iraqi military and civilian casualties. It has left behind a heavily damaged country which faces growing humanitarian needs.

As Marines drove into Baghdad through the vast eastern township of Saddam City, home to about two million impoverished Shi'ite Muslims, jubilant crowds threw flowers and cheered.

"No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. "We love you, we love you."

US soldiers briefly draped a Stars and Stripes flag on the face of the giant Saddam statue as they prepared to topple it. It was quickly replaced with an Iraqi flag that was placed on the plinth.

The war has provoked enormous Arab anger and resentment and any display of the US flag could add to those feelings. All over the Arab world, people gathered to watch scenes from Baghdad on television and reacted with a mixture of awe, disbelief, disappointment and contempt both for Saddam and the Americans.

"It seemed that Iraqis were all with Saddam, now it looks like many didn't like him. Maybe those destroying the statue are rebels against Saddam's rule," said Egyptian engineer Magdy Tawfiq who watched the Saddam statue dragged down in Cairo.

Top US officials held off from a victory dance and cautioned that the Iraq war was not over yet.

Still, a wave of euphoria swept through the administration as Bush and almost everybody else tuned in to the dramatic television images.

Bush saw the beginning of efforts to drag down the statue on television before going into meetings. When the meetings were over, the statue had been toppled.

"He watched it dragged through the streets of Baghdad. He walked out, saw it on the ground and exclaimed, 'They got it down'," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The most triumphant note came from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect of the war.

"Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators, and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom," he declared.

Saddam, who led Iraq through eight years of war with Iran as well as two military defeats at US hands after taking power in 1979, had vowed to crush a US and British invasion launched three weeks ago to overthrow him.

But looters on Wednesday gutted official buildings, hauling off anything from air conditioners to flowers. The Finance Ministry was ablaze late in the day, though it was unclear how the fire had started.

"People, if you only knew what this man did to Iraq," yelled an old man standing in the road, thrashing at a torn portrait of Saddam with his shoe -- a traditional Arab insult.

"He killed our youth, he killed millions."

Rumsfeld warned that "difficult and very dangerous days" laid ahead in which fighting would continue.

"We still must capture, account for or otherwise deal with Saddam Hussein, his sons and the senior Iraqi leadership," he told a Pentagon briefing.

Vice President Dick Cheney told a meeting of US newspaper editors in New Orleans that US and Iraqi officials would meet soon to begin planning for an interim Iraqi government.

Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters the meeting would take place on Saturday at the Ali ibn Abi Talib airbase outside the town of Nassiriya.

The United States plans to install a civil administration under a retired US General to prepare for the eventual creation of an interim government run by the Iraqis.

Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad, a nerve centre for Iraqi security services and command-and-control infrastructure, emerged as the next potential target of the invasion. Many of the most trusted members of Saddam's clan-based government and military leadership are Tikritis.

Bush's war ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said it was too early to declare military victory in Iraq.

"This conflict is not over yet. There is still resistance, not broadly spread among the Iraqi people, but among those parts of Saddam's regime that want to cling on to power," he said.

Marines seized a headquarters of Saddam's feared secret police in Baghdad, correspondent Sean Maguire reported. The deserted Directorate of General Security building in an eastern district was already being looted when the Marines arrived.

Sporadic shooting in parts of Baghdad prompted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to suspend its operations, citing "chaotic and unpredictable" conditions and the death of a staffer on Tuesday.

As word of events in Baghdad spread, rejoicing crowds took to the streets in the Kurdish-held northern city of Arbil.

Iraqi Kurds hate Saddam for his ferocious campaigns against them. His forces used poison gas on Halabja and other Kurdish towns in 1988 in a crackdown that killed tens of thousands.

In Halabja, tears streamed down the face of Fakhradeen Saleem, who lost three children in the 1988 chemical attack, as he watched television images of Saddam's government crumbling.

"How can I feel happiness or sadness after what I have been through?" the 54-year-old teacher said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war