- KIRKUK/BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- Kurdish fighters took the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk Thursday,
as U.S. troops fought die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists in Baghdad.
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- There was no word on Saddam's fate, a day after U.S.
forces seized Baghdad to a jubilant welcome from Iraqis rejoicing at the
collapse of his once-fearsome rule.
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- One U.S. Marine was killed and more than 20 wounded in
a four-hour battle with Saddam loyalists firing from the Imam al-Adham
Mosque on the east bank of the Tigris river in Baghdad.
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- "The fighting was fierce," said U.S. spokesman
Captain Frank Thorp, adding that senior Iraqi leaders were thought to have
been holed up in the area.
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- As U.S. and British forces hunted for Saddam and his
aides, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair told Iraqis they would
be in charge of their own future.
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- But some Iraqis criticized the Americans for failing
to check looting in Baghdad and warned that U.S. forces could face a popular
uprising if they stayed in the country too long.
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- The Kurds captured Kirkuk virtually without a fight after
Iraqi troops laid down their weapons or fled south toward Tikrit, residents
told a Reuters correspondent on the outskirts.
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- "It's under control," Mam Rostam, a commander
from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said.
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- The city was pounded by U.S. B-52 bombers early in the
morning, helping trigger the Iraqi rout.
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- FIGHTERS FLOOD INTO KIRKUK
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- Hundreds of PUK "peshmerga" fighters flooded
into Kirkuk, source of 40 percent of Iraq's oil revenue. Iraqi Kurds consider
the city to be their capital. Turkomans claim it as theirs.
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- Turkey expressed alarm and its foreign minister, Abdullah
Gul, said Secretary of State Colin Powell had assured Ankara that U.S.
forces would remove Kurd fighters from the city.
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- A dozen U.S. tanks and other armored vehicles were seen
rolling toward Iraq's third city of Mosul, making their debut on the northern
front in the war, now in its fourth week.
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- Further down their route, Reuters correspondent Sebastian
Alison said retreating Iraqi forces had blown up two river bridges at Khazer,
about 15 miles from Mosul.
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- U.S. Lieutenant Mark Kitchens said elements of Iraq's
Republican Guard were gathering around Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace
and power base north of Baghdad.
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- U.S. planes were bombing those formations, he added.
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- He said more fierce battles could lie ahead. "There
continues to be resistance and the overall objective of bringing down the
regime has not yet been achieved. But it will be."
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- U.S. planes bombed positions held by non-Iraqi Arab fighters
in the western Mansur district of the capital, close to an Iraqi secret
police building, a Reuters correspondent reported.
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- Fierce fighting also erupted in the Doura district housing
an oil refinery in southwest Baghdad.
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- Reuters cameraman Ahmed Bahaddou later saw U.S. troops
collecting 21 bodies, apparently Iraqi soldiers and civilians, on a road
leading from Doura to the international airport. Witnesses said other corpses
had already been picked up.
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- The International Committee of the Red Cross said it
had resumed its work in Baghdad, but was still concerned by "widespread
attacks and looting" in the capital.
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- On Wednesday, the ICRC temporarily suspended its operations,
citing "chaotic and unpredictable" conditions in the city, where
a Canadian ICRC staffer was killed in cross-fire on Tuesday.
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- Marines used explosives on a statue of Saddam, blasting
a hole in its groin, but leaving it standing.
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- Jubilant Iraqis danced and trampled on another statue
of Saddam in the heart of Baghdad on Wednesday after Marines pulled it
down, in a symbolic confirmation of his overthrow.
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- TURKISH ALARM
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- Turkey reacted sharply to the fall of Kirkuk, saying
a permanent Kurdish guerrilla presence there was "unacceptable."
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- Turkey fears that Iraqi Kurds could use Kirkuk to provide
the financial basis for an independent state and stimulate separatist demands
among its own large Kurdish minority, even as the Kurds and their U.S.
allies rule out any bid for independence.
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- Exuberance among many Iraqis at Saddam's fall was tempered
by uncertainty over Iraq's future.
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- Mehdi al-Aibi Mansur, a Shi'ite merchant, said he was
glad Saddam's era was over, but warned against a U.S. occupation.
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- "People are no longer afraid," he said. "People
will not be afraid to rise up against the Americans."
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- The United States and Britain, which have yet to declare
victory in the war, sought to reassure Iraqis. "The nightmare that
Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over," Bush
said in a message to be aired in Iraq via a new TV network, created by
London and Washington.
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- Bush and Blair promised their troops would leave Iraq
as soon as a new government was established to replace the interim authority
which is due to take over from the military.
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- However, Iran said even a temporary U.S.-led administration
would humiliate Iraqis and be a strategic mistake.
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- "The transfer of power and the setting up of a new
interim or permanent government must be done under the auspices of the
United Nations, as it was in Afghanistan," Iranian Foreign Minister
Kamal Kharrazi told the French daily Le Monde.
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- The United States has appointed retired Lieutenant General
Jay Garner to run civilian affairs in Iraq alongside the U.S. and British
military presence.
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- U.N. ROLE
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- France and China, which both opposed the war, said the
United Nations should play the leading role in rebuilding Iraq.
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- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for Iraqis to
be allowed to govern themselves as soon as possible.
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- The war has so far cost unknown thousands of Iraqi military
and civilian casualties, as well as 101 American and 30 British dead. It
battered a country that was already weakened by two previous wars and 12
years of U.N. sanctions.
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- Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the U.S.-backed opposition Iraqi
National Congress, said American and Iraqi officials would meet on Saturday
at an air base outside Nassiriya, in southern Iraq, to begin planning for
an interim government.
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- The main Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group said it had yet
to decide whether to take part in the meeting, contradicting earlier remarks
by a spokesman who said it would not do so.
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- Shi'ites make up a large proportion of Iraq's 26 million
people, who include Sunni Muslims, Kurds and Christians.
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