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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
Regime collapses Jubilant Iraqis fill Baghdad streets as Saddam reign ends By Brian MacQuarrie and Anne Barnard, Globe Staff, 4/9/2003
After three weeks of punishing coalition attacks on Iraqi forces throughout the country, the regime's power appeared to crumble completely in the capital, as Hussein's police and security forces largely vanished and looters plundered government buildings across the city.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman told reporters: ''The command and control in Baghdad appears to have disintegrated.'' He added, however, that US and British forces may still face ''stubborn and fierce'' paramilitary resistance.''
At Central Command headquarters in Qatar, American military officials were delighted with the signs of sudden capitulation in Baghdad. However, US Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman, said that major targets remain, including Hussein's home city of Tikrit as well as the major oil center of Kirkuk in the far north.
''So it's not over. We should stay on the cautious side, and say there's still more to come,'' said Thorp.
As of yesterday, US officials said that 91 American soldiers had been killed and 10 soldiers were missing, while Britain suffered 30 dead, the majority in friendly fire incidents.
''Thank you, Mr. Bush,'' looters cried to the cameras as they showed off the booty they had stripped from government ministries. One man held aloft a huge ornamental vase.
The only guns visible in the downtown area today belonged to civilians who cheered the arriving US forces.
The 350-mile charge from Kuwait to Baghdad by the US Army's Third Infantry Division and Marines was supported by a ferocious air campaign that sent US aircraft on more than 32,000 missions, including 1,700 yesterday alone. The war unleashed more than 20,000 munitions, most of them precision-guided missiles that allowed American forces to pinpoint Iraqi government targets - possibly including a strike on Monday against a restaurant where Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, were believed to be meeting.
The Iraqi government had said Monday that more than 1,200 civilians had been killed in the fighting. The total number could turn out to be far higher. Hospitals were overflowing with patients yesterday in Baghdad and emergency supplies were running low as victims poured in from the relentless US Army and Marine incursions into the city.
The anecdotes of numerous individual battles, including evidence that entire Republican Guard divisions were shot up and routed, suggested that the Iraqi casualty toll was likely to be in the tens of thousands.
There was no clear evidence today whether Hussein was alive or dead, but there was little sign of any government control in Baghdad.
Hussein's power structure seemed simply to disappear. The government minders who have accompanied foreign journalists in the capital did not turn up for work today for the first time at the Hotel Palestine, where the journalists were staying. The hotel was hit by a US tank shell yesterday, killing two cameramen and bringing the media death toll in the war to 10.
The public celebrations in Baghdad marked the first time that the Iraqi people openly celebrated the American advance, after three weeks in which the resistance of irregular paramilitary units Saddam Fedayeen fighters put up sometimes surprising levels of military resistance.
''It's too early to declare the battle of Baghdad over, but it's nice to see people feeling liberated and that the reign of terror is lifting,'' one US military official said this morning at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
The scenes of jubilation were no doubt welcome sights for President Bush and Britain's Blair, who launched the war to topple Hussein despite strong resistance from major allies such as France, Germany and Russia, which had argued that United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more time to uncover the weapons of mass destruction that Hussein was alleged to have kept in defiance of UN orders since the 1991 Gulf War.
Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, had argued that Iraq's people would welcome their liberation from Hussein's 23-year dictatorship. But in addition to the sporadic military resistance, Iraqis had remained largely sullen and suspicious in the southern cities, perhaps recalling past uprisings that had fallen short of toppling Hussein - and bringing brutal retaliation.
In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city near the borders with Kuwait and Iran, Hussein irregulars held out for most of the past three weeks. Only over the weekend did British forces, whose primary responsibility in the war to take the southern city, finally bring it fully under control.
Hussein reportedly has been avoiding his palaces and moving from house to house to elude detection, said Lieutenant Christopher Pike, intelligence officer for Third Bridgade Artillery of the Third Division. During the Gulf War, Hussein practiced similar methods of self-protection, even using Baghdad taxis to change locations.
''We believe that the attack was effective in causing destruction of that facility,'' US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters at a briefing at US Central Command headquarters in Qatar. ''As to who was inside and what their conditions are, it will take some time before we can make that full determination.''
Before the ground assault yesterday morning, airstrikes pounded what was left of Hussein's heavy weapons throughout the city, destroying artillery and mortar launchers that had been pulled back to Baghdad for the final battle. The effect was devastating, as pilots reported ever-dwindling counterfire from Iraqi defenders.
In yesterday's fighting, the Republican Guard fired rocket-propelled grenades sporadically. However, the hand-held launchers were proving no match for the heavy US armor of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
''We're seeing a T-72 tank here and there, and small groups of fighters... sporadic resistance,'' said Captain Derrick Anthony of Third Brigade artillery.
Yesterday morning, Second Brigade pushed north from the main presidential place in an aggressive thrust deep into Baghdad. Almost simultaneously, Third Brigade attacked hard across the north of the city in the double-edge assault to drive a wedge through Baghdad.
The brigade seized a transformer yard and Republican Guard barracks, and surrounded a mosque at a Shi'ite holy site, Kail said. The brigade's artillery also pounded Ba'ath Party headquarters in central Baghdad.
The corridor generally parallels the Tigris River, Kail said, and gives US troops a good route through the city for access, safety, and logistical support.
When asked whether the end were close, Kail answered: ''We're at the 10-yard line.'' He quickly added that the conclusion of the conflict is difficult to predict or define. ''No one knows what `regime change' will look like,'' Kail said. ''Is there going to be a dramatic event like, say, we take Saddam's body out and everybody lays their weapons down, or is it going to be after 10 days when everybody stops shooting?''
To Captain Bryan Kilbride of Woburn, an artillery-support officer for Third Brigade, the end will not be declared until the Hussein regime is unequivocally dislodged. ''All I know is we're still being shot at,'' Kilbride said.
Before yesterday's attack, commanders had been briefed to expect no more than platoon-strength opposition in the city, and that many units of the Republican Guard had taken up positions inside mosques and schools, Pike said.
Kail said US forces have orders not to attack such sites unless fired upon. American psychological-operations officers have been working near such places, particularly the mosques, to advise residents that US troops will enter them only to remove armed, hostile units, he added.
One key indicator of the loss of Iraqi firepower has been a plummeting decline in artillery and mortar fire coming out of Baghdad. ''Two nights ago, we were tracking tons of fire,'' Pike said yesterday. ''Then on Monday, there was less than half of that. Now, there's virtually nothing. Every day, their ability to strike at us is degraded tremendously.''
The biggest threat remains the guerrillas who have been harassing the US advance since the war's earliest days. Continued strikes, particularly against the vulnerable supply trains, are expected, Pike said.
However, Kail said, the volume of hostile fire appears to be decreasing with each hour, Kail said. ''Everybody who goes in there gets contact, but it's declining,'' he added.
Republican Guard troops have booby-trapped many of the facilities they abandoned in the city, Pike said. Fragmentation grenades, for example, have been attached to door locks, and are designed to fall and explode when the door is opened.
Amid all the military success, US troops are being advised to maintain their guard in what remains a dangerous environment. ''The last thing you want to do is ease up at this point,'' Kail said. ''You'd end up being punched in the mouth.''
In one clash yesterday near the international airport in western Baghdad, US Army forces fought back an attack by Iraqi soldiers who filled buses and trucks full of fighters in an attempt to overrun American positions.
At least 50 Iraqi fighters were killed, said Captain Philip Wolford, a Third Division commander. Two US soldiers were reported wounded, one seriously, by snipers on rooftops. With the help of A-10 Warthog attack planes, US troops repelled the attack and retook the position, Wolford added.
In the eastern parts of the capital, US Marines witnessed widespread looting among residents amid growing signs that the Hussein government was losing control of parts of Baghdad.
''As we were driving down the street we saw Iraqi civilians pushing desks on two-by-fours, tires, and so forth. We saw them carrying at least 30 5-gallon water jugs,'' said Sergeant Robert Goulet of Anaheim, Calif. ''It looked like the LA riots. They were giving us the thumbs up. ''
Until yesterday, US military officials said they controlled all of the Iraqi skies except the airspace in and around Baghdad and Tikrit, Hussein's hometown. But after the fourth day of US infiltration into the capital, officials said US forces had full control of the skies.
MacQuarrie reported from Baghdad, Milligan from Washington. Anne Barnard of the Globe Staff contributed to this report from Doha, Qatar; and Robert Schlesinger from Washington.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/9/2003.
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