WASHINGTON – The last of Saddam Hussein’s military forces in northern Iraq collapsed yesterday as commanders surrendered control of Mosul to U.S. troops and prepared to abandon the fierce defense of the strategic town of Qaim.
The surrender of Saddam’s last outposts leaves the U.S. military with only one major objective remaining: Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad.
U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish rebel soldiers entered Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city and a major oil center, after the commander of Iraq’s 5th Corps surrendered and the U.S. stopped the relentless bombing of the estimated 30,000 troops in the city. The fall of Mosul prompted scenes of jubilation, as well as mass looting of banks and local government buildings as small numbers of Special Forces troops entered the city with Kurdish forces.
Later in the day, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon news briefing that commanders in the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, who had put up a massive defense of an area where U.S. intelligence believes weapons of mass destruction sites are located, were also surrendering.
Myers said the town is also considered a transit point for regime leaders fleeing the country.
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DAY 23
MOSUL: U.S.-led Kurdish forces take city without resistance as the entire 5th Corps of the Iraqi army surrenders to coalition forces; mobs go onlooting rampage.
TIKRIT: The only city not under U.S. control – that is about to change.
QAIM: U.S. negotiating surrender of Iraqi troops after fierce fighting.
RAMADI: U.S. aircraft fore six bombs at an intelligence building believing Saddam’s half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti to be inside.
NASIRIYAH: Two Iraqi children shot dead by U.S. Marines; nine other Iraqis injured as Marines open fire on a car that fails to stop.
BASRA: Reports that British forces killed five looters in move to stamp out lawlessness
BAGHDAD: Capital descends into anarchy as thousands of Iraqis loot and plunder the capital; sporadic resistance to U.S. forces
-Graphic by The Times of London