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| Mosul
falls as Baghdad gripped by lawlessness Dozens of US troops dodged sniper fire as they drove into Mosul, the oil rich city that has also been devastated by looting after it fell to coalition-backed Kurdish fighters earlier in the day. US commanders said their troops were also securing the nearby northern city of Kirkuk after US-backed Kurdish fighters seized it almost unopposed on Thursday, leaving Saddam Hussein's ancestral power base of Tikrit as the last major holdout in Iraq. Two days after statues of the Iraqi leader were toppled in Baghdad, there was still no sign of Saddam. The White House said his "regime is gone" as a political force but that the war in Iraq was not over for troops still battling resistance from loyal pockets of resistance. "There is no question the regime has lost control, and that represents a great turning point for the people of Iraq as the regime is gone," spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. But US President George W. Bush's joy at toppling Saddam is muted "because we still have American troops in harm's way," battling die-hard loyalists, and therefore "there may be more wounded, there may be more dead," he added. "There still are Baath party officials who maintain some loyalty to what is left of the regime, and therefore there are still dangers ahead," said Fleischer. "So the military mission remains underway." In Baghdad, the anarchy created by the power vacuum left by Saddam's fall deepened. Twenty-five people sustained gunshot wounds in looting-related clashes, hospital sources said, while the International Committee of the Red Cross said only three of the city's 32 hospitals were open. The few remaining doctors were carrying weapons to ward off looters who had not spared hospitals in their pillaging, stealing medicines, stethoscopes, towels, air conditioners, and even incubators. |
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