Cheering, looting breaks out in Baghdad
Posted to ABC Online at 18:41 AustralianEST
Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis have mobbed a convoy of US Marines, cheering, dancing and waving as American troops swept towards central Baghdad through slums and leafy suburbs from the east.

Reports from the streets of Baghdad say crowds threw flowers at the Marines as they drove past the Martyrs' Monument, just three kilometres east of the central Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris river.

"These are quite extraordinary scenes," Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said after a morning's drive through the rundown sprawl of Saddam City and then through more prosperous suburbs with villas and trim lawns.

The crowds, mainly young and middle-aged men, many wearing the soccer shirts of leading western clubs like Manchester United, shouted "hello, hello" as Marines advanced through local traffic.

"No more (President) Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed.

"We love you, we love you."

One young man ran alongside a Marine armoured personnel carrier trying to hand over a heavy belt of ammunition.

An older man made a wild kicking gesture with his foot, saying "Goodbye Saddam."

But a US military spokesman says it is too early to talk of the battle for Baghdad and the war in general being over.

"I think it's premature to talk about the end of this operation yet," Captain Frank Thorp said at Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar.

"There may be many more fierce fighting days in front of us as coalition forces continue to move within Baghdad and within the country," he said.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair says Iraq's command and control structure appears to have broken down in the capital, but resistance to advancing US troops could still be quite "stubborn and fierce".

Looting
Across town, looters have attacked major sites in the city including UN headquarters and around the Olympic Committee building.

Police and other officials were absent from major streets, according to reports.

Television crews watched cheering crowds sack the UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel to the east of the centre, and then drive off in UN cars.

Another correspondent saw looters raid sports shops around the bombed Iraqi Olympic Committee building, the effective headquarters of President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday.

The building is said to be engulfed by flame.

The correspondent says authority appears to have broken down in the capital as US troops moved in.

"This has been in the air for days. People have just been waiting for a sign that the Americans are in the city," reporter Khaled Oweis said.

"People heard the Americans were in Saddam City."

He says he could see no police in the main central thoroughfares.

He says the only shooting in the city centre was from Iraqi paramilitaries firing sporadically at US forces across the river.

The firing came from around the Palestine Hotel, home to many foreign journalists, but the US military did not return fire.

Two foreign journalists were killed in the hotel yesterday when a US tank fired a shell at the building.

That was the easy part. Now the coalition has to reimpose civil order and start nation-building bigtime.