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Kurds facing little resistance in north

Snapshot of the war * US, Kurdish forces take Mosul without a fight; US says entire Iraqi 5th Corps surrenders; crowds go on looting rampage, torch a central market * US says continues to attack forces in Tikrit from air * Baghdad descends deeper into anarchy as armed men roam Iraqi capital, sporadic resistance to US forces * US Marines say they killed two children when driver of their vehicle failed to stop at Nassiriya checkpoint * Red Cross says it doubts any Baghdad hospital still working; aid agencies say inability of US, UK troops to rein in looting threatens to hamper humanitarian efforts * US says sees Iraq leadership meeting in coming week Source: Reuters

US and Kurdish forces took Iraq's third city of Mosul without a fight yesterday, sealing their victory in the north, but gunbattles and looting continued in Baghdad in the absence of any government.

Kurdish guerrillas said they would hand over the important oil hub of Kirkuk to US troops later yesterday. The rich city, traditional capital of the Kurds, fell on Thursday to mixed units of Kurdish guerrillas and US special forces.

In Baghdad, Iraqi gunmen, apparently from the long oppressed Shiite majority in the east-side slums, battled Fedayeen paramilitaries loyal to deposed President Saddam Hussein overnight, US military sources said.

Elsewhere in the capital, there was a fresh outbreak of intense looting in an area newly abandoned by non-Iraqi Arab paramilitary fighters.

Hundreds of Iraqi civilians besieged the national headquarters of Iraq's military intelligence, searching for relatives they say had been detained there.

The chaos in Baghdad, the murder of a religious leader in the holy city of Najaf and a suicide bombing at a Baghdad checkpoint on Thursday highlighted the problems US troops face in restoring order despite a crushing military victory.

Humanitarian organizations criticized the US troops, saying the failure to prevent looting and anarchy threatened their efforts to provide desperately needed assistance.

Two days after US forces drove tanks into the heart of Baghdad, the whereabouts of Saddam and other former Iraqi leaders were still unknown.

US troops moved to take control of the strategic prize of Kirkuk and began by spreading through the oilfields near the city, which provide 40 percent of Iraq's oil revenue. Hundreds of dejected Iraqis were seen walking south.

The Kurds have promised to leave Kirkuk, helping to calm Turkish alarm after the Kurdish peshmerga militia took it over in a largely bloodless rout of Iraqi forces.

"Yes, we expect to be leaving when the Americans arrive, and that may well be later today," said Mam Rostam, a Kurdish commander whose forces had rushed into Kirkuk, apparently without the full agreement of Washington.

Ankara fears the Kurds could use the city's wealth to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands by Turkey's large Kurdish minority.

A Kurdish commander at a checkpoint just outside Mosul said fighters loyal to Saddam had fled. Journalists in Mosul said they saw no fighting but crowds went on a looting rampage, stripping buildings bare and torching a central market.

Events in the north left Saddam's home town of Tikrit, which is 175km north of Baghdad on the main road from Mosul, as the one significant target left to the US-led forces. Mosul is 390km north of the capital.

US forces pressed on with efforts to hunt down deposed Iraqi leaders.

A US aircraft hit the residence of Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and former head of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service, with six "smart bombs."

The results of the attack on the building, which was also an operations center for the intelligence service, were not yet known. There was no indication US forces thought Saddam might be in the house near Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.

In Najaf on Thursday, a mob stabbed and shot to death Iraqi Shiite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei and an aide in the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, the city's holiest shrine. The killings seemed certain to widen divisions and sow hatred among Shiites, who are 60 percent of the population.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a US checkpoint in the capital on Thursday evening. "Some are dead in the attack but I don't know how many," Marine officer Matt Baker said. A Pentagon spokesman said four soldiers were wounded.

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