Saddam's hometown is last Iraqi holdout

Baghdad - Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit became the regime's last major holdout Friday as his forces surrendered in the largest northern city and dissolved elsewhere into streams of unarmed, bootless ex-soldiers trekking home. Looters moved in as they moved out, pillaging banks and other buildings.

Mosul, the main city in the north and third-biggest in Iraq (news - web sites), fell without bloodshed as American forces arrived and accepted the surrender of the Iraqi army's 5th Corps commander. Looting and celebrations spread quickly; some people grabbed wads of bills from the Central Bank.

U.C. commanders in Mosul were determining whether to treat the surrendering forces as prisoners of war or let them return home, said Capt. Frank Thorp, a Central Command spokesman.

In Baghdad, where regime control collapsed on Wednesday, U.S. troops were trying to curb looting that continued unabated for a third straight day. In parts of the capital, Marines were starting to enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The looters' latest targets included Baghdad's nursing college and engineering college. In some cases, entire families — parents and children — searched together for plunder.

"Tell the Americans to stop the killing and the looting," pleaded one Baghdad woman, Jabryah Aziz, 41. "We can't live like this much longer, with Muslims looting other Muslims."

Before dawn Friday, U.S. warplanes fired six satellite-guided bombs at an intelligence building in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, believing that Saddam's half brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, was inside. U.S. commanders said they were still assessing damage and casualties from the strike.

Al-Takriti, a former head of the secret police, was a close adviser to Saddam and allegedly helped hide millions of dollars abroad while serving as ambassador to Switzerland.

The fall of Mosul, a city of more than 600,000, came a day after U.S. and Kurdish forces took Kirkuk, the other major city in the north. Both cities have economic links to nearby oil fields that have been secured virtually intact.

Thorp said there may still be some Iraqi forces willing to fight in and around Mosul, but described the surrender the 5th Corps as "very significant."

"They have made the very wise choice of living for the future of Iraq instead of dying for this Iraqi regime," he said.

Kurdish civilians from their autonomous region in the far northeast of Iraq were streaming into Kirkuk on Friday, delighted at the chance to see friends and relatives for the first time in years. Many were dressed in what appeared to be their finest clothes.

On the other side of Kirkuk, thousands of young Iraqi soldiers walked south toward Baghdad on Friday, making their way home on a blacktop highway after abandoning their positions. The unarmed men, some of them barefoot, wore civilian clothes and carried little or nothing; some said it might take seven days to reach their home towns in the south.

One man told CNN that his military superiors, before vanishing several days ago, had confiscated the soldiers' documents in an attempt to keep them from deserting.

The rapid U.S.-Kurdish advance in the north brought the front to within 60 miles of Tikrit, where some of Saddam's remaining backers are believed to be taking refuge. Coalition aircraft have been striking Republican Guard positions in Tikrit, and roadblocks have been erected to prevent Iraqi leaders from reaching the city to wage a last stand.

U.S. special operations forces also have set up roadblocks along routes to Syria, searching for fleeing members of Saddam's regime and for fighters or equipment coming in from Syria, according to U.S. military officials.

Even in areas of Iraq controlled by the U.S.-led coalition, dangers remained. In Baghdad, four Marines were seriously wounded late Thursday when a man strapped with explosives approached a checkpoint and blew himself up.

U.S. officers said their primary concerns now were to ward off any similar attacks and work to restore security, water and power to Baghdad. "Now I feel like I'm in Beirut, Lebanon, waiting for the suicide bombers," said Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, commander of the Army's 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment. "We know they're holed up on the other side of the river and scattered around the city."

Britain's international development minister, Clare Short, suggested Friday that U.S. forces weren't doing enough to restore order in Baghdad.

"There must be a much bigger effort to stop all this looting and violence," she told BBC radio.

However, a spokesman for British forces in Iraq, Group Capt. Al Lockwood, said trying to crack down on looters too quickly could prove unwise.

"The last thing that we want to do is to be seen to be oppressing them when they're just having their first taste of freedom," he said.

Reconciliation will be one of many challenges for the interim government which the coalition plans to establish over the coming weeks.

Until that government is formed, the Pentagon envisions parallel ministries led by Americans and Iraqis, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the oversight of public services such as health care and electricity would gradually shift from the U.S.-led ministries to the Iraqi ones.

Wolfowitz offered no details about how long it would take to form the interim government, or how many U.S. troops and civilians might stay in Iraq after the war.

A British official, Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien, suggested in a BBC television interview that an interim administration could be in place in 90 days, but added, "don't hold me to that."

Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri, the first Iraqi official to concede defeat, said Friday he was quitting his job and leaving New York. In an interview with Al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite channel, he complained that U.S. forces in Iraq are "destroying, ravaging, killing."

Asked earlier if he intended to defect, Al-Douri replied, "There is no more Iraqi government to be defected from." -- Associated Press

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