Only Tikrit remains for the US to overcome

US forces were focusing their attention on Saddam Hussein’s ancestral power base of Tikrit yesterday, after adding the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to a string of rapid-fire battlefield victories.

But as the Iraqi president's remaining vestiges of control slipped away, so did law and order, as city after city plunged deeper into chaos and anarchy, with widespread looting and shootingscreating havoc on the streets.

US troops in Baghdad, Kirkuk and now Mosul have proved unwilling to halt the anarchy, concentrating instead on securing their positions and jumpily watching out for potential attackers, notably suicide bombers.

US spokesman Major General Victor Renuart told a media briefing that Tikrit was now "an area we're focused on as we continue our military operations".

He said there were no substantial US forces around the northern town, which is located next to the small commune of Ouja, where Saddam Hussein was born.

But Navy Captain Frank Thorp said: "Over the last 24 hours what you have are continuing air strikes against Iraqi military targets in the area of Tikrit as well as against regime leadership targets."

An unknown number of Iraqi forces are believed to be in the Tikrit area, including fighters from Saddam's Republican Guard.

Saddam and the Iraqi regime were "either dead or they are running like hell," the top military commander of the US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, told reporters during a visit to an airbase outside Afghanistan's capital Kabul.

Franks' use of Kurdish peshmerga fighters as advance troops in Iraq's north has irked close US ally Turkey, which has repeatedly threatened to launch its own invasion if Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk or Mosul.

Ankara fears such strategic grabs by the Iraqi Kurds could ignite a drive for independence among its own large and restive Kurdish population.

But the commander of one of the Kurdish guerrilla groups, General "Mam" Rostam of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said most of his men had been ordered to leave Kirkuk by Saturday.

The PUK's "prime minister" Barham Salah said US troop reinforcements were headed to the city.

Turkey said it has with US permission sent some15 military observers into northern Iraq to ensure the Kurds stick to a three-way deal to withdraw from the cities.