MOSUL, Iraq, April 11 -- Iraqi forces fled Mosul without a fight today, completing the fall of northern Iraq and leaving U.S. or British troops in nominal control of all the country's major cities after 23 days of warfare.
Tikrit, the home town of the ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, 90 miles north of Baghdad, remained outside the U.S.-British occupation, as did numerous other small communities in this now-chaotic nation of 24 million inhabitants. Some U.S. officials had expressed fear Hussein or his lieutenants could still make a last stand at Tikrit, but military officers cited intelligence from Predator reconnaissance drones showing no major troop formations there.
Kurdish militiamen confront a looter in Mosul, in northern Iraq that was abandoned by Iraqi forces. Looters then stormed government offices, libraries and armories and the university.
(Peter Andrew Bosch -- Miami Herald Via Krt)
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The apparent success of the U.S. military campaign was undercut by scenes of unchecked lawlessness and looting across the country, including in Baghdad. U.S. troops gingerly sought to restore order, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the capital. But reducing pockets of armed resistance and protecting their own forces remained their priorities.
Fearing suicide bombings, Marines at a Baghdad checkpoint opened fire on an approaching car, killing three adults and wounding a 5-year-old girl. In a similar shooting, Marines at a checkpoint at Nasiriyah, about 200 miles south of the capital, opened fire on a car that failed to heed orders to halt, killing two young children.
The Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said U.S. troops in Iraq would receive the names and photos of 55 senior figures from Hussein's family, the government, the Baath Party and the Revolutionary Command Council, in the hope the toppled Iraqi leaders can be tracked down and captured. Only one senior figure from Hussein's three-decade rule has been accounted for: Gen. Ali Hassan Majeed, known to his detractors as "Chemical Ali," was reported killed a week ago in an airstrike on his home near Basra. A U.S.-led airstrike this week targeted a house about 60 miles west of Baghdad belonging to Hussein's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, former head of the secret police. There was no word on casualties from that attack.
Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who heads the U.S. Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and is assigned to impose a new civil administration in Iraq, predicted the mayhem and looting would soon be calmed; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld characterized it as "untidiness" in a briefing to reporters in Washington. Iraqis face a bright future, Garner asserted, once the United States arranged for an interim government, got humanitarian aid flowing and began to phase out the military occupation.
"We'll get them off on the right start and then they'll be in control of their own lives," Garner said in Umm Qasr, just over Iraq's border with Kuwait at the head of the Persian Gulf. "This country has great vibrancy to it. It has an educated population that was the jewel of the Middle East at one time and it can be the jewel of the Middle East again."
But Mosul, a graceful city on a bend of the Tigris River about 500 miles north of where Garner spoke, descended into anarchy this morning with widespread looting and intermittent shooting as soon as the Iraqi military's 5th Corps fled. U.S. forces remained at points to the north, west and east, leading to bitter complaints from frightened Arab residents who said their Kurdish neighbors were behind the pillaging.
"Where are they?" asked Idris Tawfik, an Arab engineer, referring to U.S. troops. "We appeal for the soldiers to come and give us security. We don't need this," he said, gesturing to looters pulling furniture from nearby government buildings.
"It's good to be free from the regime. But the Americans started this war. They must finish it," said Ahmed Yassin, another civil engineer. "They can't leave us stranded like this. First it is public property being stolen; later it will be things from my house."
Kirkuk, northern Iraq's other major city about 100 miles southeast of here, fell Thursday and was immediately occupied by Kurdish guerrilla forces, who opened the way for a similar round of looting. They remained in control tonight, despite U.S. pledges they would leave.
But Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was at first left alone by the major Kurdish militias, despite its sizable Kurdish population. Turkey, which has vowed to prevent a Kurdish takeover of northern Iraq and its rich oil fields, had protested vigorously at the swift seizure of Kirkuk, and Kurdish leaders may have hesitated at provoking the Turkish military any further. In addition, Mosul, although the region's major city, has played less of a role in Kurdish history and culture than Kirkuk.
Preachers at Friday prayers in Mosul's mosques complained about the dangerous power vacuum. At night, hidden gunmen fired on journalists roaming the city. One man approached members of a news team from Italy and threatened them with a hand grenade.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two militia-backed groups that has ruled a U.S.- and British-protected zone of northern Iraq that was beyond the control of the collapsed central government, sent forces to Mosul late tonight to restore order, according to Hoshyar Zubari, one of the group's senior leaders.
He blamed U.S. forces for the delay. "They dragged their feet. They wouldn't go in or let us in," he said. "We decided to go anyway."
It was uncertain how the Kurdish militias would be greeted in the Arab areas of Mosul. About 30 percent to 40 percent of the city's population is Kurds. As in Kirkuk, the ethnic complexion of Mosul has changed somewhat in recent years -- and grown tenser -- because of a government "Arabization" program that prompted many Kurds to leave and drew in Arabs from elsewhere in the country.
Some residents expressed opposition to a Kurdish move on Mosul. "We don't want the militias here," said Amir Jaholi, a young man who rushed up to a reporter in the city's main square. "No militias!"
The war ended for both Mosul and Kirkuk with little fighting by U.S. or Kurdish ground forces. Rather, airstrikes were the main weapon against forces defending the cities and adjacent oil fields. Most of the aerial assaults targeted trenches, roads, tanks and artillery pieces in rural areas.
The northern front was relatively quiet compared with the south. Turkey refused to let U.S. troops invade northern Iraq from its territory. At last count, about 3,000 U.S. Special Forces, paratroop and other units had flown into Kurdish-controlled airfields. About 2,000 of them, from the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, have been assigned to secure Kirkuk, its oil fields and a military air base.
The Kurdish militias total about 60,000 lightly armed fighters, but far fewer were deployed on the rolling terrain to confront Iraqi government troops. U.S. commanders sent the guerrillas, armed with rifles, machine guns, mortars and anti-tank weapons, to occupy positions abandoned by the Iraqi military.
Kurdish officials had predicted Mosul and Kirkuk would fall on their own once Baghdad came under U.S. domination. Today, according to reports from Kurdish officials, the Iraqi regular army's 5th Corps signed a formal surrender agreement with U.S. officers. It was not clear how many troops would turn themselves in.
Residents of Mosul said the bulk of the forces withdrew south. Sandbags and trenches placed at intersections were abandoned. Military trucks and armored vehicles littered the road to Mosul from the east.
Iraqi paramilitary forces were also gone. Looters ransacked offices of the Baath Party, the army and security services and carted off furniture and air conditioners. The now customary toppling of a Hussein statue did not take place in Mosul. Several public portraits were defaced -- but not all of them, as in Kirkuk. Images of Hussein still smiled down from the entrance of the train station and a security agency compound in town.
Several residents said that the breaking point for Mosul came not from bombing, but from images aired on Kurdish television that showed the demolition of Hussein's statue in Baghdad. "People began to feel that soon Mosul would be free. No more Hitler, no more Stalin, no more Saddam," said Nathem Abdul Ahad, a geologist.
Abdul Ahad and other residents said that senior military officials, leaders of the Baath Party and neighborhood security forces met Wednesday and decided to leave by train from Mosul for Syria. Their accounts could not be confirmed.
The 5th Corps had defended the roads, ridges and passes outside of Mosul. The city itself was defended by Baath Party militiamen, a feared group known as Saddam's Fedayeen, and a ragtag lightly armed group called the Jerusalem Army.
Mosul, where reeds grow on the muddy banks of the Tigris below mud-colored houses and domed mosques of the Old Town, is known in Iraq for nationalist fervor. It is a wellspring for Iraqi army recruits, and military chiefs of staff have frequently been drawn from the Mosul officer corps. Ahad said the city might still face violence engendered by remnants of Hussein's vast security forces.
"The Baath, the Special Republican Guards, the Fedayeen, they are sitting at home, waiting," he said.
Although Mosul is ethnically divided, various groups have lived side by side for years and mostly in peace. The Arab majority resides largely on the river's west bank, the minority Kurds on the east.
The reaction of each group to the army's fade was initially similar. In the morning, Arabs took to the town's main square and celebrated the end of Hussein's rule. Then they began to loot. A mob stormed the central bank offices and tossed newly minted currency around like confetti. Men and boys grasped whole stacks of the bills, which bear Hussein's portraits. There appeared to be no hard currency remaining in the vaults.
Just across the street, Mosul's regional government building was stripped bare of furniture. A lone man pushed a gilt sofa from the governor's office three stories down the stairs.
"I'm happy about the end of the dictator," he told a reporter who asked what he was doing.
A boy who looked no older than eight cradled fluorescent lighting. "We need it in the house," he said. Mosul University was also sacked of furniture and equipment. At the archeological museum downtown, looters ransacked the offices but left its treasure of ancient stone monuments and pottery untouched.
By the end of the day, downtown residents began to make hostile remarks to journalists who traveled around the city. Sympathetic Mosul residents warned them not to have contact with anyone after dark.
"Stay away. There is danger here," said Ahmed Ayoub, a vegetable vendor in front of his closed shop.
Kurdish residents rapturously greeted the arrival of freelance Kurdish gunmen with clapping and song. Like their Arab counterparts, they turned to ransacking government warehouses and offices. Rioters also torched a central food distribution center.
The armed Kurds stayed largely on the east bank -- as if the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan formally end at the Tigris. A few drove to the Arab side in pickup trucks, firing machine guns into the air. Arabs squatting in front of shuttered stores fingered worry beads and silently watched.
