Last stronghold falls: The final nail was yesterday hammered into the coffin of Saddam Hussein's regime when US marines entered the centre of the fallen dictator's home town of Tikrit to find the streets empty. Gone without a fight were the former loyalist troops they had been expecting to battle, writes Lynne O'Donnell
One short outburst of heavy shooting before dawn hardly hindered the irreversible march of the coalition forces into what had been the bastion of Baathist support but became another walkover in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Residents who had largely barricaded themselves in their homes for the five days since the former loyalist forces fled the city ventured cautiously out into the searing heat to welcome the Americans and declare it "a happy day".
American tanks and armoured personnel carriers, backed by Cobra helicopters, entered the centre of Tikrit early in the morning and immediately secured the symbolically significant presidential palace, where Saddam Hussein is rumoured to have kept sharks in pools beneath perspex floors.
The soldiers quickly fanned out into the deserted streets to search for any pockets of resistance. All they encountered was some isolated rifle fire, which was sporadic and short-lived.
In a surprisingly swift operation, long columns of marines had pushed north from Baghdad, just 150 kilometres away, through the cities of Bagurran and Samarra, located on the banks of the Tigris River, in less than 48 hours.
A heavy campaign of bombing by B-52, F-14 and FA-18 fighter jets flying in from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf had helped to soften the defences of the city.
The aim of the operation was to isolate Tikrit - which sits in the midst of a barren moonscape in the centre of the country - from the south, west and north.
The Republican Guard managed to destroy two key bridges, including one outside the city of Bayji, in the midst of the bombing onslaught, but the river bed, which has almost dried up, presented few problems to the advancing forces.
By Sunday, the fall of Tikrit was simply a matter of time, as the resistance which the Americans had been expecting from Saddam's power base faded into the harsh glare of the desert.
The city, held tightly in the clench of clans whose loyalty was purchased by Saddam Hussein as he ascended the ranks of the Baath Party, was more famous before his rise to power as the birthplace of Saladin, the Kurdish warrior whose exploits against the Crusaders have made him a hero to Arabs throughout the Middle East.
That Saddam Hussein was born in an impoverished village called al-Awja on the eastern outskirts of Tikrit put it at the centre of operational planning by coalition generals, who were convinced that it would be the scene of bitter fighting.
That was not to be. In the face of the military might of the United States, the bluff of Baathist support has been called.
Throughout Tikrit, military installations such as barracks, equipment storehouses and units believed to have been used by the Special Republican Guard lay abandoned as if their occupants had been in such a hurry to leave that they had not even stopped to turn off the lights.
As in the other cities of the centre and north, Tikrit has been vanquished and the Baath Party's control of it has been completely broken.
Tikrit's fall gives the coalition absolute territorial superiority throughout Iraq and hands their forces an unequivocal victory in their quest to rid the country of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.
But the obvious signs that the Saddamites had been preparing for a fierce defence of the city are everywhere - huge caches of ammunition loaded into trucks or piled high near fortified foxholes; storehouses stacked with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines and surface-to-air missiles; bunkers filled with artillery shells.
The apparent disappearance of what must have been a vast army is a repeat of what has happened in other cities across Iraq, where resistance has not just buckled, but has melted into thin air.
This has led to some confusion about whether or not the Baathist soldiers have indeed fled en masse, or whether they have simply donned civilian clothes and are planning to try to draw the American and British forces into urban guerilla-style fighting.
Fear of suicide-bombers was behind a marked vigilance among the marines who took up their positions around the city-centre while helicopters continued to patrol the skies.
Few, however, expect Tikrit to fall victim to the anarchy which has blighted nearby cities in the north, most notably Mosul, where armed gangs were still marauding, although the situation was being slowly brought under control by a limited presence of US troops.
In nearby Kirkuk, by contrast, the Americans have set up road blocks to control the flow of traffic in and out of the city and small columns of tanks and APCs patrol the centre and surrounding areas.
Uniformed policemen have also established a presence in Kirkuk as confidence and calm return and as the oilfields - among the richest in the world - are secured from attack and sabotage.