Mosul falls as Iraqis surrender, leaving Tikrit as last holdout
( 2003-04-12 09:02 ) (7 )

American forces entered this northern Iraqi oil city Friday afternoon after it fell without a fight as the last of Saddam Hussein's loyalists vanished during the night.

In Mosul, as in other urban areas captured by the coalition, chaos spread through the city. After a day of systematic looting of offices, shops, banks, universities, and hospitals, the few people on the streets when the Americans arrived to claim the city gave the troops a lukewarm reception.

The capture of Mosul left Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad and the home town of Saddam Hussein, the remaining major target for the United States military. Fragmented reports said that senior members of the Saddam Hussein family may be hiding there, perhaps in preparation for a last stand.

At the White House, the chief spokesman said that while the administration was still not ready to declare victory in Iraq and that tough fighting lay ahead for the American troops, it was clear that Saddam Hussein's rule was at an end.

``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,'' the spokesman, Ari Fleischer told reporters.

American commanders had expected a hard fight to win control of Mosul, but as their forces positioned themselves for an attack, the commander of the Iraqi 5th Army Corps, a regular army unit, sent word that he wanted to surrender. A formal ceasefire was signed today, according to officials at the United States military's Central Command in Doha, Qatar.

Despite the formal surrender, there were still pockets of resistance across the sprawling, modern city, and after spending about 30 minutes in the city the American-led force - composed of a dozen United States special forces members and several hundred Kurd allies - was forced to retreat this afternoon, at least temporarily, after they came under sustained fire when they tried to secure the central government buildings.

Residents said that it appeared that most of the Iraqi fighters had fled by 7 p.m. Thursday. With their departure, the city fell into a frenzy of looting and lawlessness.

With the breakdown in authority, the American forces and their Kurdish allies at first hesitated outside the town - for about eight hours - but by midafternoon, they and the Kurd fighters came in to claim control of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

Although some residents flashed thumbs up signs to the small convoy of Americans, most of the residents stood with their arms crossed and stared blankly.

Angry residents blamed the Americans for the anarchy in the city, saying that they had needlessly delayed their arrival for hours after the Iraqi army fled and allowed order in the city to crumble.

Adding to the disorder was the rising tension between Arab and Kurdish communities in the city. Arabs make up 65 percent of the city's population and minority Kurds have accused them of benefiting under Mr. Hussein's rule or standing by as Kurds were persecuted.

The rampant theft in the city appeared to be carried out mostly by young men from all ethic groups, but many Arab residents blamed Kurds for the looting.

At the central bank, fights broke out among looters trying to snatch stolen money from each other. The main vaults were smashed open, and bank notes poured out.

The Associated Press reported that at Saddam General Hospital, three of the five ambulances were stolen, and armed men, described as Kurds, tried to enter the hospital, but the staff managed to hold them off. Some doctors said that their cars were stolen at gunpoint. Officials at Jumhuriya Hospital said all eight of its ambulances were stolen at gunpoint.

``The doctors ran away because they even looted their offices,'' Haleema Hanzad Abbas, a worker at Saddam General, told a New York Times reporter that accompanied American troops into the city. ``We see injured people and we cannot do anything.''

As the American convoy pulled into the center of the city, they passed a burning military hospital and the central bank building was also aflame. Across the city, at least six other large fires could be seen.

As the convoy arrived within blocks of the abandoned governor's office, five or six shots rang out, fired by a suspected sniper or snipers.

``It came from inside a building,'' a special forces soldier said. ``He was hiding in the shadows.''

The Americans then parked their half dozen vehicles in front of the building and moved inside to sweep the building, which was stripped of furniture and any valuables and was littered with paper.

Back outside, the officer leading the group had spread out a map on the hood of a land cruiser and was talking to his aides when more shots rang out. Special forces members moved back into the complex to try to pinpoint where the gunfire was coming from.

Minutes later, shots were fired at them from three different directions.

Someone barked the order, ``Mount up!'' With that, the Americans and the Kurdish fighters drove out of the city.

Elsewhere on the battle front, the American forces were consolidating their hold today on Kirkuk, the north oil city captured on Thursday.

The anxieties of Turkey hang over the situation in Kirkuk as well as Mosul. Turkey is concerned that the northern portion of Iraq, which has prospered under the protection of American and British warplanes, since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, will break away, setting an example for the Kurdish populated areas of their own country.

The Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said on Thursday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had promised him that the Kurdish fighters would be moved from Kirkuk and that American troops would take control of the town.

A leader of one of the main Kurdish political groups, Jalal Talabni, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said that Kurdish forces entered Kirkuk on Thursday to secure the oil fields from retreating Iraqi troops. He said that the American forces would replace them shortly.

Reuters reported that American troops started securing the airport and oilfields in and around Kirkuk today.

Some reports said that the inner circle of the Saddam Hussein family were using Mosul as a way to get to Syria, but by today that escape route was probably closed off.

At the daily media briefing at Central Command today, Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks told reporters that an Iraqi colonel responsible for controlling the main roads at the Syrian border had surrendered to American special forces troops.

``He turned over the keys to the border control point at Highway 11,'' General Brooks said. ``The coalition now controls that border crossing point.''

The general said said that cards with the names and faces of 55 major regime leaders who must be captured or killed are being distributed to allied troops. He said that the list also is being publicized around Iraq on posters and handbills.

General Brooks would not identify figures on the list, but he had it clear that it included Mr. Hussein; his sons, Uday and Qusay; and key military and government officials, among them the Iraqi information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, who defiantly insisted that invading American troops had been crushed even as they were moving in on his ministry.

General Brooks said that some of the Iraqi leaders on the list may already be dead, like Ali Hassan al-Majid, Mr. Hussein's notorious cousin and southern military commander. Mr. al-Majid, known as ``Chemical Ali'' for his role in using chemical weapons to suppress the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq, is believed to have been killed earlier in the week during a bombing raid against a compound in Basra.