BAGHDAD, 10 April 2003 — Saddam Hussein’s rule collapsed in chaos in Baghdad yesterday as elated Iraqis welcomed US forces while looters and gunmen ran wild. As US Marines rolled in from the east to a joyous reception on day 21 of the war, hundreds of people gutted official buildings, dragging off all they could carry, from air conditioners to flowers.
“People, if you only knew what this man did to Iraq,” yelled an old man standing in the road, thrashing at a torn portrait of Saddam with his shoe. “He killed our youth, he killed millions.” There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, targeted by US planes that dropped four 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs on a residential area in Baghdad on Tuesday. “It is not known whether Saddam and sons were present and whether they survived the attack,” a CIA official said.
Crowds threw flowers and cheered as US Marines drove into the city from the sprawling eastern suburb of Saddam City, home to about two million impoverished Shiite Muslims. “I believe we are on the last leg,” Marine Col. John Toolan told Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, with the Marines on their triumphal ride through the suburbs to the Martyr’s Monument, just five kilometers from the center.
US war ally Britain said Iraqi “command and control” of Baghdad seemed to have disintegrated. But Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said Saddam loyalists could still offer paramilitary resistance in places.
They paused only to show off their booty to the cameras. Then they rushed back to strip the abandoned ministries of President Saddam Hussein of anything of value. And there wasn’t much. One looter staggered under the weight of an ornamental vase half his height.
The only guns on these streets in central Baghdad yesterday were the AK-47s of civilians who broke off looting to denounce Saddam and jump for joy in front of foreign camera crews. Younger men piled office chairs, tables and boxes into the back of pickup trucks. Others emerged from a depot rolling yellow tires. Crowds later looted government food stores used to dole out state rations and buildings belonging to Saddam’s Baath Party.
