Suicide bomber attacks marines in Baghdad

US forces battled fighters still loyal to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad today as rampant looting persisted in the capital.

To the north, Kurdish fighters reported a major gain, entering the city of Kirkuk near some of Iraq’s most productive oil fields.

And tonight four US Marines were seriously injured when a suicide bomber walked up to a Baghdad checkpoint and detonated explosives that were strapped to his chest.

The attack took place near the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists are staying. It also is near Fardos Square, where a large statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was pulled down a day earlier.

Marine Captain Joe Plenzler said, according to initial reports, that “a man strapped with explosives approached a Marine checkpoint and detonated himself.”

A day after declaring that Saddam Hussein’s regime no longer controlled Baghdad, the US Central Command said American marines engaged in “intense fighting” with pro-Saddam forces at the Imam Mosque, the al-Azimyah Palace and the house of a leader of the Baath party.

One US Marine was killed and up to 20 were wounded.

Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman at Central Command in Qatar, said troops acted on information that regime leaders were trying to organise a meeting in the area. During the operations, he said, Marines were fired on from the mosque compound.

He said he didn’t know whether Saddam was among those trying to organise the meeting or whether any regime leaders were captured or killed.

The volatile security situation in much of the country – with the regime’s control gone but coalition authority not yet established – was apparent from the killings of two Shiite Muslim clerics at the holiest site for the Shiites, the Ali Mosque in the central Iraqi city of Najaf.

Witnesses said the two religious leaders got into an argument with men from a rival Shiite faction, one of the clerics pulled a gun, and a crowd formed and hacked to death the two clerics with knives and swords.

The two victims – one a former supporter of Saddam, the other an opposition figure – had gone to the mosque together as a symbol of reconciliation.

In Baghdad, two large explosions were heard tonight, and it appeared remnants of Saddam’s army were firing artillery at the old presidential palace on the Tigris River that is now held by US troops.

The Americans were shooting back at the source of fire.

Despite the nagging Iraqi resistance, US commanders were focusing on plans to oust pro-Saddam forces from remaining strongholds – including Saddam’s heavily defended hometown of Tikrit and the northern city of Mosul.

US military officials said in Qatar that navy bombers and special forces teams were targeting Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad, to ensure it does not become a new command centre for the regime as Iraqi soldiers are pushed into the area both from the capital and the north.

US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to calm fears by Iraqis and other Arabs that the coalition troops would become an occupying force.

“We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave,” Bush said in a video message that was broadcast to Iraqi TV sets from a specially adapted Hercules transport plane called a Rivet Rider.

Blair said: “Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors.”

In northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters in more than 100 vehicles – from pick-ups to a rubbish truck – drove through the oil city of Kirkuk. It was unclear whether Iraqi forces were still in Kirkuk, but shooting erupted on the city’s north-west edge.

US military officials stressed that the Kurdish fighters were coordinating with American special operations troops, an apparent attempt to reassure Turkey that the Kurds would not run the northern oil centre – which the Turks would see as a signal of their worst fear, creation of an independent Kurdish state.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said Turkey would send military observers to Kirkuk – at the invitation of US Secretary of State Colin Powell - to make sure Iraqi Kurdish fighters withdraw from the city.

There was no sign of damage to the northern oil wells, which US officials had said were rigged with explosives. Kurdish forces also took control of the oil-producing city of Khaneqin, 90 miles north of Baghdad and near the Iranian border.

In Baghdad, thousands of people from poor outlying districts surged into the city centre with wheelbarrows and pushcarts for a second day of looting, setting fires to some Interior Ministry buildings and making off with anything they could carry. Looted buildings included the homes of Saddam’s son Odai, deputy premier Tariq Aziz, German Embassy and the French Cultural Centre.

“There’s civilian looting like crazy, all over the place,” said Lance Corporal Darren Pickard, adding there weren’t enough American soldiers to carry out orders to stop the vandalism.

Civilians appeared fearful – both of US forces and of the possibility that pro-Saddam fighters were still in the city in civilian clothes.

“We’re all afraid,” Ahmed Jabbar Hashem said while in a car scanning the street for fighters. “The Iraq) soldiers are still out there, we just don’t know who they are.”

One hotel manager said: ”There’s one good thing only – Saddam has disappeared. Everything else is bad. There’s no food. there’s no water, and everyone is afraid.”

In many parts of the country, civilians struggled with serious shortages of food, medicine and clean water. Several major international aid groups are demanding swift access to Iraqi civilians without interference from coalition troops.

“We need the independence to move around and do our assessments and we need security,” said Kathleen Hunt of Care International.

Hoping to restore some degree of order to the southern city of Basra, British troops asked residents to turn in their guns – no questions asked.

Humanitarian assistance is expected to be high on the agenda of the U.S.-led interim administration expected to begin operating in Baghdad within the next week or two.

Headed by retired US General Jay Garner, the team also is expected to rebuild shattered infrastructure and start setting up a democratic government.

Saddam’s precise fate remained unknown. Hoping to resolve the mystery, US special operations forces examined a site in a Baghdad residential neighbourhood that was bombed on Monday based on intelligence that Saddam and at least one of his sons were there.

Across the Arab world, the fall of Baghdad – and the televised scenes of jubilation and looting – provoked shock, disbelief and bitterness. Some Arabs expressed hope that other oppressive regimes in the region would crumble others were disappointed that Saddam’s forces crumbled.

After an anti-war march in Khartoum, Sudan, lawyer Ali al-Sayed said US troops should not misinterpret the rejoicing in Baghdad as an invitation to stay.

“Those people under oppression ... they will be happy to see someone removing a dictator and liberating them,” al-Sayed said. “But the moment they feel free and liberated, they will not tolerate a foreign presence.”

In Damascus, Syria, Haitham Baghdadi, 45, expressed the disillusionment that many Arabs felt after realising Saddam’s threats to destroy the invading American and British were only bravado.

“We Arabs are clever only at talking,” Baghdadi said. ”Where are the Iraqi weapons? Where are the Iraqi soldiers?”