WASHINGTON, 12 April 2003 — The United States said yesterday the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein is gone, but US President George W. Bush was not ready to declare victory and will tell Americans tough fighting remains.

Anarchy in the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities was evidence of both the collapse of Saddam’s government and a lack of full control by US forces, but a White House spokesman described the chaos as part of the transition from oppression to “liberty and freedom.”

“There’s no question that the regime has lost control, and that represents a great turning point for the people of Iraq as the regime is gone,” spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “The military mission remains under way even though the regime has all but disappeared.”

His comments echoed the remarks of the commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks, who said in Afghanistan yesterday the Iraqi leaders were “either dead or running like hell.”

The State Department said the United States would convene a meeting of Iraqis in the southern city of Nassiriyah on Tuesday to discuss the future of Iraq and an interim authority that may govern the country.

But it was too early to declare victory, Fleischer said. Bush was expected to say in his weekly radio address today that there could be tough fighting ahead.

The United States launched the war with the twin goals of ousting Saddam and eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Saddam’s fate is unknown following US attempts to bomb him and there have been no finds of chemical or biological weapons, which Iraq denied possessing.

Battles still raged as pockets of loyalists in Saddam’s Baath Party continued to put up resistance even though the central government had collapsed, Fleischer said.

“There may be more wounded, there may be more dead, and that tempers the president’s reaction,” he said.

He said US military civil units were becoming increasingly involved in providing security within Iraq. But US military officials have been wary of assuming a policing role and US soldiers stood by in Baghdad while looters rampaged and a shopkeeper screamed in frustration, “Is this your liberation?”

Fleischer asserted looting had already subsided in the southern city of Basra and would do so elsewhere. But international aid officials on Thursday said Basra remained too unstable to enter, and Britain said its forces would shift operations over the next three days to crack down on continuing lawlessness.

“No one should miss the larger picture here, and that is a horrible regime has been lifted from the Iraqi people,” Fleischer said. “It is a reaction against oppression. It is on the way to liberty and freedom. No one likes to see looting, but that’s the context.”

Bush yesterday made his first visits to US troops wounded in the Iraq war, thanking them for service and sacrifice and watching two injured Marines become US citizens.

The president and first lady Laura Bush visited patients at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center and was later to go to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, visiting about 73 patients in all.

He was to hand out Purple Heart medals to 16 of the war wounded who have not already received them.

“The president looks at this as an opportunity to visit privately with those brave men and women who were injured and to express his gratitude to them on behalf of the nation,” a White House official said.

Bush was urged this week by the head of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic diocese to grant citizenship quickly to immigrant soldiers fighting in Iraq.

The White House has said that was already possible under a presidential order last year offering expedited consideration for active-duty soldiers during “the war against terrorists.”

So far, 107 US troops have died in the three-week oil Iraq war. A total of 399 American troops have been wounded or otherwise injured, 11 are missing and seven are listed as prisoners of war held by Iraq, the Defense Department said yesterday in its daily accounting of war casualties.