Saddam's Republican Guard mostly a no-show

American military commanders were today asking themselves a troubling question after rumbling into the centre of Baghdad almost unopposed: where did Saddam Hussein’s feared Republican Guard go?

There had been intense speculation about the long-awaited Battle for Baghdad, including dire warnings of house-to-house urban combat and maybe even having to defend against the use of chemical weapons.

But US Marines yesterday took the very heart of city amid scenes of rejoicing Iraqi civilians.

“Where are the Iraqis at?” Cpl Nate Decavelle wondered aloud.

The Republican Guard, Saddam’s best-trained and best-equipped military units, were mostly not to be found. Advancing US troops came upon abandoned tanks, guns and even uniforms as they moved through the city suburbs.

But as the focus of the war shifts to the suspected stronghold of Iraqi loyalists in the northern city of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, some warn that it is too early to write off the Iraqi forces.

One US official involved in both military operations and intelligence said thousands of Iraqi troops remain unaccounted for.

“That’s the scary part,” he said. “We don’t know where these guys went to. Did they just melt into the population? Are they planning to come back out as paramilitary? Are they laying in wait?”

Before the battle for Baghdad, US military chiefs estimated that Allied air strikes had wiped out about half the strength of the remaining four Republican Guard divisions.

Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, said all but a couple of dozen the Iraqis’ tanks had been destroyed in less than three weeks of combat.

A statement – reportedly from Saddam – seemed to verify that any kind of Iraqi military control was in disarray, calling on troops separated from their units to join up with other any other unit they could find and fend off the Americans.

US military officials privately acknowledged they overestimated their enemy.

Iraq’s military machine, once billed as the world’s fourth-largest, lost half its might during the 1991 Gulf War. Its tanks were outdated, and what was left of its air force did not dare take to the skies this time.

Brig Gen Vincent Brooks, deputy operations director at US Central Command, said many Iraqi fighters simply decided not to die for a crumbling regime.

But he also insisted the US military cannot assume they decided to “just walk off the battlefield and never fight again”.

In fact, Brooks said yesterday that Iraqi reinforcements seemed to be converging on Tikrit.

Coalition aircraft are hitting hard at the Republic Guard’s Adnan division there. And coalition roadblocks are also trying to prevent Iraqi leaders from reaching Tikrit and mounting a potential last stand.

Whether fully-fledged fighting with the Republican Guard – or guerrilla warfare – lies ahead, Capt Frank Thorp, another spokesman at US Central Command, would guarantee only one thing: “This battle definitely isn’t over.”