THURSDAY APRIL 10 2003 $1.20* IRAQ CELEBRATES - SPECIAL ... · Iraq’sUNambassador, Mohammed...
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$1.20* Includes GST Freight Extra ($1.40 Tas)THURSDAY APRIL 10 2003
IRAQ CELEBRATES - SPECIAL 8AM EDITION
Jubilant Baghdad tastesits f irst night of freedom
Peter WilsonBaghdad
THE Baghdad night rang with
cheers and chants as the Iraqi
capital celebrated the end of a
tyrant.
Cries of ‘‘Shame on you Sad-dam’’, ‘‘USA, USA’’ and ‘‘Curse
Saddam’s father’’, echoed in Ara-bic up the city’s broad boulevards,where US Marines were mobbed
by delighted opponents of Sad-damHussein’s 24-year-old regime.
The crowds revelled in the cool
evening, destroying statues and
portraits of Saddam in a repeat of
the scene that followed the fall of
dictatorships from Romania and
the Soviet Union to the Philip-pines of Ferdinand Marcos.
Gunfire and occasional cannon
blasts continued to sound
through the night from battles
between Marines and Baghdad’sremaining staunch hold-outs, butthe sense of relief in this city of 5
million was overwhelming.
In Al-Firdos Square, east of theTigris River, crowds were atop a
huge iron statue of Hussein,which had been toppled from a
crane mounted on a US tank
recovery vehicle.
As dustyMarines and dozens of
TV cameramen watched, 20-oddIraqis bounced on top of the
statue, which soon lost its head
and was trampled under the
tracks of the US military vehicle.
Half a dozen men dragged the
head up and down Al-SadoonStreet,while othershammed itup
for the cameras by stomping on
therestof thestatueorslapping it
with their shoes.
In one of the gravest insults in
Arabic culture, people ranging
from small girls to old men
slapped the Saddam statue and
any portrait on sight, yelling
‘‘crush Saddam underfoot’’.Looting continued in several
parts of the city and the Marines
faced a dangerous task avoiding a
complete breakdown of order.
The challenges of finishing off
Hussein’s armed followers and
then trying to establish a new
regime that has at least some
chance of winning wide support
Continued — Page 2
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SADDAM FALLS
Tyrant toppled: A statue of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein is pulled down in central Baghdad Pictures: Reuters, AP
All Australians, supporters and opponents of thiswar alike, should celebrate what appears to be itsimminent end, and our role in the liberation of Iraq
Editorial — Page 14
Peter Wilson● Baghdad
Welcome: An Iraqi child kisses a US soldier in Baghdad today
IN a defining gesturemarking
the end of Saddam Hussein’sbrutal 24-year iron rule, US
Marines early today helped
thepeopleofBaghdadtopplea
giant statue of the dictator in
the jubilant aftermath of
American tanks rolling into
the heart of the Iraqi capital.Three weeks after the US
launched its assualt on Hussein,Iraq’sUNambassador,Mohammed
Al-Douri, this morning declared:
‘‘The game is over and I hope the
peace will prevail. I hope the Iraqi
people will have a happy life.’’US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said Hussein was his-tory after the dramatic uprising
on Iraq’s streets, likening the fall
of Baghdad to the end of commu-nism in Eastern Europe.
‘‘SaddamHussein is now taking
his rightful place alongsideHitler,Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the
pantheon of failed brutal dic-tators, and the Iraqi people are
well on their way to freedom,’’ Mr
Rumsfeld said in Washington.
On the 21st day of Operation
Iraqi Freedom, the last remnants
of the Hussein regime’s authority
in the capital crumbled as Ameri-can forces took control of greater
Baghdad and, amid widescale
looting, exultant crowds cheered,danced, waved and threw flowers
at US soldiers as their tanks
rumbled into town from all cor-ners of the city.
Sweeping aside pockets of
resistance from disorganised mil-itias in the centre of Baghdad, US
tanks and military vehicles drove
unimpeded into the previously
hostile centre of the city.
While Shi’ite Muslims, long
oppressed by the Hussein regime,danced openly in the east of the
city, US troops arrived to a largely
empty central Baghdad, with no
cars on the streets and few people.
Although the welcome was
more subdued, soon after a small
group of men began pulling down
the largemonument toHussein in
the centre of the main shopping
district, a task completed by the
crane of a US Marine M-88 tank
recovery vehicle.
The first popular uprising in the
Iraqi capital began in the northeast
suburbofSaddamCity,agrimslum
areaof largelyShi’iteMuslims,afterthousands of US Marines swept
through yesterday morning.
The incursion through the poor
neighbourhood, home to about
2million, prompted hundreds of
mostly young Iraqimen to take to
the streets, waving palm fronds
and repeatedly chanting ‘‘theman is an enemy of God’’, refer-ring to Hussein.
A Shi’ite Muslim leader told a
group of 400 to 500 people: ‘‘The
tyrant of the world is finished,thanks to the coalition. ThankGod
for Iraq the victorious.’’Despite taking central Baghdad,
US forces were meeting pockets of
resistance in other parts of the city
and commanders warned there
were still Hussein loyalists fighting
the coalition in northern Iraq.
US President George W. Bush
last night said through spokesman
Ari Fleischer the downfall of the
regime was an ‘‘historic moment’’and it showed the ‘‘freedom’s taste
is unquenchable’’.Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed
Chalabi, a favourite of the Penta-gon and likely to take a leading role
in the post-war administration, tolda rally in the southern Iraqi city of
NasiriyahthatthedaysofHussein’styranny were over.
‘‘I salute you who have suffered
under Saddam’s tyranny and
oppression over so many years. I
can tell you that those days are
finished,’’ Mr Chalabi said.
‘‘We are working hard to see an
Iraq built on the rule of law, democ-racy and the rights of individuals.
We want an Iraq where every
person, regardless of who he is, isequal to the next person.’’
Although a bloody urban battle
forBaghdadwas expectedbymany
observers, the US sweep into the
capital was in fact swift and Amer-ican forces encircling the city faced
little organised resistance after just
twodaysoffightingalongtheTigris
River.
After a second assassination
attempt on Hussein and tank skir-mishes in the city that killed three
journalists, the final day of the
battlecameafteroneofthequietest
nights since the conflict began on
March 20.
By day break, therewere no Iraqi
police or troops on themain streets
and Information Ministry officials
had disappeared. The ubiquitous
Information Minister, Mohammad
Said al-Sahhaf, whose daily brief-ingshadrepresentedthepublicface
of the regime, failed to appear.
The absence of authority and the
arrival of US forces prompted
Continued — Page 2