Residents set up blockades to quell Iraq looting

Armed with rifles, Baghdad residents beat up looters and blockaded Baghdad streets today in an attempt to quell the pillaging and lawlessness running rampant in the Iraqi capital.

US commanders issued new rules of behaviour for the capital but said the military wouldn’t act as a police force.

As thousands of Iraqis – including some entire families with young children - raided government buildings and hauled away everything from cars to refrigerators, residents in the Karada neighbourhood set up roadblocks and checked cars for stolen goods.

Suspected thieves were pulled out, beaten and thrown into an alley. Locals pleaded with US troops help stop the looting.

In new rules of conduct issued today, war commander General Tommy Franks banned American troops from using deadly force to prevent looting.

Fighting had dwindled to occasional bursts of machine-gun fire but American troops were still on high alert for ambushes and suicide attacks by fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein.

“I feel like I’m in Beirut waiting for the suicide bombers,” Lieutenant Colonel Philip DeCamp said. ”We know they’re holed up on the other side of the river and scattered around the city.”

US troops opened fire today on car carrying an Iraqi family drove through a Baghdad checkpoint without stopping. Three adults were killed and a 5-year-old girl was wounded.

On Thursday night, a vehicle containing explosives was driven to a checkpoint near the Saddam City section of Baghdad and detonated. Four Marines and one medical corpsman were wounded.

A short time later, a man started walking toward US soldiers stationed at an intersection near the government’s tourism department. The soldiers opened fire after he failed to heed four warning shots. When they found his body in the morning, he was unarmed.

The incidents underscored troops’ concerns about security in the capital – and fears of suicide attacks.

Fires burned throughout central Baghdad. The Trade and Planning ministries were smouldering, along with one of the city’s main markets.

People raided the nursing college at Baghdad University as well as the Engineering College. Looters left with light fixtures, desks, water coolers and air conditioners.

Three men stood on the roof of the German Embassy unscrewing a large satellite dish. Sofas, tables, chairs, electronic equipment and a refrigerator were taken from the Information Ministry.

Cars were stolen off the streets. If the thieves could not start the engines, they towed the cars away.

Children as young as 10 and entire families took part in the looting.

Residents in some neighbourhoods erected street barricades of tiles, huge rocks and sandbags to keep looters out.

“Tell the Americans to stop the killing and the looting. We can’t live like this much longer, with Muslims looting other Muslims,” said 41-year-old Jabryah Aziz. “I need to feel safe so I can go and collect my food ration.”

In the Al-Mansour district in western Baghdad, pro-Saddam bands of Arab volunteers manned sandbagged positions, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles. Residents said they were mostly Syrians.

In Saddam City, mosque minarets urged Iraqis to stop looting and destroying their city. Some people heeded the clerics’ calls and took stolen goods to mosques for safekeeping.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, at Central Command in Qatar, said the military is helping to rebuild the civil administration but expects the Iraqis themselves to assume responsibility for law and order.

“At no time do we really see becoming a police force,” Brooks said.

Franks said US troops should allow government workers to go to their jobs, and that hospitals, businesses, mosques and schools should remain open.

Bands of looters also roaming the residential areas, casing homes to see if the residents were home. Journalists trying to talk to the looters were robbed of money and cameras.

Taleb Abdel-Razaq, who works in a coffee shop, stood in central Baghdad and watched looters coming out of government departments and stores with their plunder

“I cannot believe it. Are these really Iraqis?” he said. ”What happened to their honour and their patriotism? This is our country. How could they do this? If they have to loot, fine. But why should they torch everywhere they go?”

Long queues formed outside bakeries, garbage piled up on the streets along with debris from three days of looting.

American troops, meanwhile, hammered on the toppled statue of Saddam in a central square, breaking off pieces as souvenirs.

“It’s memorabilia, it’s for us being here, what we’ve done and what’s to come, what the Iraqi people will have,” said Marine Sergeant Leigh Hahn. “It’s hopefully a new start for them, and down with the old and hope something else will rise up.”

At the Al-Rashid Hotel, Americans troops traded a doormat of former US President George Bush senior with one of Saddam.