US and Kurdish forces took Iraq's third city of Mosul without a fight today as support for Saddam Hussein collapsed in the north, but shooting and looting plunged Baghdad and other cities into chaos.
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An Iraqi man tears a five dinar note with Saddam Hussein's picture on it after looters emptied the central bank in Mosul today.
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Dozens of US troops dodged sniper fire as they drove into Mosul, the oil-rich city that was ransacked by looters after it fell to coalition-backed Kurdish fighters earlier in the day.
US commanders said their troops were also securing the nearby northern city of Kirkuk after Kurdish fighters seized it almost unopposed yesterday, leaving Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ancestral power base of Tikrit as the last major holdout in the country.
Two days after Baghdad fell to US-led forces, and on day 23 of the US-led war, there was still no sign of Saddam or his sons, but his half-brother was said to have been killed in a US air strike.
The capital meanwhile slipped deeper into anarchy, as looters attacked government buildings, hotels and even hospitals, stealing medicines, stethoscopes, air conditioning units, and incubators.
Doctors struggling to work in one of only three hospitals still open in Baghdad were forced to carry rifles, and they were treating looters who had been shot by shopkeepers who had taken law enforcement into their own hands.
"We want the law to rule and if the Americans don't defend us then we'll defend ourselves with our own weapons," said one shopkeeper.
The situation in the city's hospitals was dire, said Pascal Jansen, a coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A dozen looters helped themselves undisturbed at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery and statues were seen broken or overturned, and Baghdad's two most prestigious hotels, the Rashid and the Mansur, were both in flames.
US forces insist their first priority has to be rooting out remaining Iraqi resistance before tackling the huge task of restoring order. A US commander in Baghdad said troops would begin neighborhood patrols tonight to try to gain the confidence of locals.
The situation in northern Iraq was being watched with growing concern by Turkey, which fears that Kurdish control of the region could encourage Kurdish independence and stoke separatist ambitions among Turkish Kurds.
Ankara sent military observers to northern Iraq after Kurdish fighters backed by US forces captured Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Kurdish militia had started to move out of Kirkuk today as US special forces secured the city.
However, top officials met in Ankara to review contingency plans to possibly send Turkish forces across the border.
In Mosul, the US special forces drove into the city centre aboard 11 jeeps after US commanders said Iraqi forces had signed a ceasefire. They were followed by hundreds of Kurdish peshmerga fighters who had taken the city overnight in the name of the US-led coalition.
But after passing through deserted streets devastated by looting and bombing raids, the US soldiers withdrew from a government building after coming under sniper fire.
US military planners switched their attention to Tikrit, saying they were carrying out air strikes on Iraqi forces. The seat of Saddam's tribal support is expected to pose the last major direct challenge for the US-led forces who launched the war on March 20th and saw the Iraqi leader's regime collapse in Baghdad just three weeks later.
The White House said Saddam's "regime is gone" as a political force but that the war in Iraq was not over for US-led troops still battling resistance from loyal pockets of resistance.
"There is no question the regime has lost control, and that represents a great turning point for the people of Iraq as the regime is gone," spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer told reporters.
US General Tommy Franks, the man directing the military campaign in Iraq, said Saddam and his regime were either "dead or running like hell".
US officials have issued a list of 55 individuals wanted by coalition forces and wanted Iraqis to help in hunting down members of Saddam's collapsed regime.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the fall of Saddam, but said it had been achieved by the wrong means.
"It is good that the Saddam Hussein regime has fallen. We said for a long time he had to be brought down. We did not defend him, we said it should not be done by force," the Russian leader said after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac in Saint Petersburg.
Russia, Germany and France - all strongly opposed to the war - all said they wanted the United Nations to play a major role in rebuilding Iraq.
AFP