BAGHDAD (REUTERS) — Saddam Hussein’s harsh 24-year reign over Iraq collapsed and U.S. troops tightened their grip on the heart of Baghdad Thursday after ecstatic Iraqis toppled a giant statue of their deposed ruler.
The night skies over Baghdad fell quiet for the first time since the war began three weeks ago, but U.S. warplanes pounded Tikrit, Saddam’s birthplace and tribal power base, 110 miles north of the capitol, the next city in the path of advancing American ground forces.
The world watched on television hours earlier as Iraqis trampled the shattered 20-foot statue and dragged its decapitated metal head through the streets in a display of contempt for the man who led the country into three ruinous wars resulting in massive human losses and economic damage.
As the shadow of Saddam’s rule dissolved and his authority collapsed, Iraqis who had lived in fear were suddenly free to express their feelings. But U.S. control over Baghdad was not total.
The city’s streets emptied as night fell, and tank and artillery fire boomed on the western bank of the Tigris River.
There was no reliable word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, Uday and Qusay, targeted by U.S. bombs in a western residential area of the city Monday. American officials said they did not know if the Iraqi leader survived the attack, but rumors abounded he was dead, wounded or alive and fleeing to Syria.
Russia denied reports Saddam was hiding in its embassy compound in Baghdad, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to squash speculation Saddam had fled to Syria.
There were “intelligence scraps” that Saddam family members and supporters were fleeing in the direction of Syria, but they were not “very senior, senior people,” Rumsfeld said.
U.S. troops have yet to occupy northern cities such as Tikrit, Mosul and Kirkuk, but American and Kurdish forces forced Iraqis to flee from their mountain defenses outside Mosul — their biggest victory yet in the north.
U.S. planes flew overhead and the distant thud of explosions was heard as hundreds of Kurdish fighters streamed toward the key northern oil hub of Kirkuk late Wednesday, Reuters correspondent Mike Collett-White reported.
Indelible scenes
The indelible scenes in Baghdad recalled the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall as Iraqis hacked at the marble base of Saddam’s statue with a sledgehammer. Youths looped a noose around the statue’s neck and a Marine armored vehicle pulled it down.
The crowd swarmed over the shattered statue and people danced for joy, waving their arms and fists in the air.
The celebrations, interspersed with anarchic scenes of looting in the capitol, came three weeks after President Bush began the war to oust Saddam and seize control of Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam’s government denied having any such weapons, and so far there is no definitive word any have been found, although U.S. experts are testing some suspicious substances discovered earlier this week.
Top U.S. officials held off declaring victory and cautioned the war was not over yet, but the Bush administration was clearly delighted as the president and his officials watched the television images of Saddam’s statue being toppled.
In New York, people watched mesmerized as a huge television screen in Times Square showed the celebrations in Baghdad.
“I think it’s going to be a big relief to all Americans to see that we’re being welcomed now and that maybe we are liberating Iraq,” onlooker Steve Brimigar told Reuters.
“I’m really proud of our soldiers and excited for this thing to be over and those people over there to be free,” said Gerri Wales.
The war has so far cost 101 American dead, 30 British dead and unknown thousands of Iraqi military and civilian casualties. It has left behind a heavily damaged country that faces growing humanitarian needs.
As Marines rolled into Baghdad through the vast eastern township of Saddam City, home to about 2 million impoverished Shi’ite Muslims, crowds threw flowers and cheered.
“No more Saddam Hussein,” chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. “We love you, we love you.”
All over the Arab world, people gathered to watch what was happening in Baghdad. They reacted with a mixture of shock, disbelief, disappointment and contempt both for Saddam and the Americans. Some were in denial.
“This is a tragedy and a bloody comedy. We cannot believe what we see. What happened? It seems that the Iraqis have given up Baghdad without a fight. Where is the Iraqi army? Have they evaporated?” said Walid Salem, a Ramallah shopkeeper.
Blair delighted
British prime minister Tony Blair said through a spokesman, “We are all, as you would expect, watching these images along with the rest of the country and we are delighted at what we are seeing.”
The most triumphant note came from Rumsfeld, a key architect of the war.
“Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators, and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom,” he declared.
Saddam, who led Iraq through eight years of war with Iran as well as two military defeats by the United States after taking power in 1979, had vowed to crush the U.S. and British invasion launched three weeks ago to overthrow him.
Looters in Baghdad gutted official buildings, hauling off anything that was not nailed down, from air conditioners to flowers and office supplies.
“People, if you only knew what this man did to Iraq,” yelled an old man standing in the road, thrashing at a ripped portrait of Saddam with his shoe — a traditional Arab insult.
“He killed our youth, he killed millions.”
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters a meeting of U.S. and Iraqi officials would take place Saturday at an air base outside Nassiriya, to begin planning for an interim government. But he criticized the United States for failing to immediately bolster security and ease humanitarian conditions in Iraq.
Washington plans to install a civil administration under retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner to prepare for the eventual creation of an interim government run by the Iraqis.
“Where is General Garner now?” Chalabi said in an interview with CNN. “People are hungry; their supplies are going to run out. Why are they not here? Why are they in Kuwait?”