BAGHDAD, Iraq April 10 —
They used shoes and slippers, sledgehammers, cardboard boxes,
sticks and garbage. Joyous Baghdad residents pelted, swatted and
swung just about anything they could find Wednesday at the toppled
statue of Saddam Hussein the most potent symbol of the Iraqi
leader's stunningly swift demise.
"Now my son can have a chance in life," said Bushra Abed,
pointing to her 2-year-old son, Ibrahim, as they watched the statue
come down in central Baghdad with the help of U.S. Marines images
that were broadcast throughout the Arab world and beyond.
Hours later north of Baghdad, U.S. Marines took control of a
palace early Thursday after a fierce, three-hour fire fight in which
they used heavy machine guns. An undetermined Iraqi force used
rocket-propelled grenades, hitting some American vehicles. There
were no serious injuries among Americans.
On Wednesday, there were signs of mixed emotion toward U.S.
forces. Marines briefly covered Saddam's face with an American flag,
and were greeted with silence. They quickly replaced it with the
Iraqi flag, to cheers from the crowd.
There was also scattered sniper fire directed at the U.S. troops,
and fighting broke out in some parts of the city. In one
neighborhood, hundreds of Iraqis who'd been cheering American troops
came under heavy automatic weapons fire at sunset, apparently from
Iraqi fighters. At least six people were killed in a car riddled by
bullets.
But mostly, it was a day for celebrating when fear of the regime
began to melt, and hope surged across the Iraqi capital.
Watching U.S. troops move through the city in armored convoys,
people flooded the streets to cheer. Women lifted their babies for
the soldiers to kiss. Young men shouted in English, "Bush No. 1,
Bush No. 1."
Some men, swept up by the emotion of the moment, rushed into the
streets wearing only their underwear to greet the Marines.
"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start
living," Yussuf Abed Kazim, a mosque preacher, said as he whacked
tile and concrete off the pedestal of the toppled statue.
Many in the crowd beat their chests and chanted, "There is a
burning in our chests," a Shiite Muslim slogan. Celebrations were
particularly strong in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods, like Saddam
City in the northeast. In one area, hundreds of jubilant Shiites
shouted, "There is no God but Allah!" waving palm fronds and prayer
stones.
Shiites make up the majority in Iraq but have long felt oppressed
at the hands of Saddam's largely Sunni Muslim government.
With no one to police them and certainly no sign of Saddam some
Iraqis went on a looting rampage, mostly against installations of
the government that ruled them for decades: ministry buildings, the
state-owned Oil Marketing Co., traffic police headquarters, even
Iraq's Olympic headquarters, said to be the site of a torture center
run by Saddam's eldest son, Odai.
Youths stripped tires off military vehicles. Men made off with a
police car, pushing it down the street and waving its red-and-blue
roof light in triumph. One man tottered down the street carrying an
elaborate vase half his height. Others hauled ceiling fans,
refrigerators, TV sets, computers, appliances, tires, bookshelves
and tables from government buildings.
A woman, possibly in her mid-70s, grabbed a mattress from a
furniture shop on al-Saadoun Street and dragged it with considerable
difficulty across the street on her way home. Two young men stole
gold-rimmed copies of the Quran from a bookshop.
One Iraqi, expressing his disgust at the looting, said: "We are
now afraid of other Iraqis, not the Americans."
But the enduring symbol of the day was surely the toppling of the
towering Saddam statue, a gesture that recalled the frenzied
euphoria that swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union more than a
decade ago. Then, it was a statue of Lenin that came tumbling
down.
Saddam's statue in al-Firdos (Paradise) Square was in the same
Soviet style, depicting the Iraqi president standing tall in a
civilian suit, right arm raised in a wave to his people. It was one
of his most popular poses; tens of thousands of his images can be
found in this nation of some 26 million people.
This one stood in the middle of a large roundabout ringed with
columns in front of the blue-domed Shahid, or Ramadan 14th, Mosque.
The tops of the columns are engraved with Saddam's initials.
It began in the afternoon, when the crowd tried to knock the
metal statue off its pedestal by chipping away at the base with
sledgehammers. That didn't work. Then they tried a rope around the
neck. Still no success.
Finally the Marines stepped in, with a winch on a tank recovery
vehicle. The first pull brought the statue onto its stomach,
dangling off its 25-foot-high pedestal as the crowd pelted it with
garbage.
Another tug, and it broke in half, leaving only the twisted metal
of the feet with two rusted pipes sticking out.
With the 40-foot bronze statue now flat on the ground, men surged
forward and climbed on top of it, dancing on the chest and face
before beating it with sledgehammers. "Hit the eye, hit the eye,"
one of them cried.
Iraqis and U.S. Marines hugged, high-fived or shook hands. Some
of the Marines held their rifles aloft in a victorious pose. Women
ululated and men cheered. Groups of men offered prayers of
thanks.
Others dragged the torn-off head through the streets, while
children rode it and beat it with shoes and slippers a grave insult
in the Arab world.
"I don't like to see a foreign army in Iraq," said Abed, the
mother who watched the statue come down. "But all those who tried to
get rid of him were killed. We have no choice, we lived in so much
fear," she said.
Not all Iraqis agreed, and some were angered by the felling of
Saddam's likeness.
"This is the destruction of Islam," said Qassim al-Shamari, a
50-year-old laborer in a beige robe. "After all, Iraq is our
country. And what about all the women and children who died in the
bombing?"
Store owner Ali Al-Obeidi directed a warning at the presence of
U.S. troops. "We will never allow them to stay," he said. "Whatever
he (Saddam) has done, he is a Muslim, and we are a Muslim
nation."
There was considerable sniper fire as U.S. troops moved through
the city. Marines traded small arms fire with forces in a building
near the Interior Ministry. There was also heavy fighting around
Baghdad University, located in a loop of the Tigris River south of
the city center.
At a former Republican Guard military installation in the city,
now a base for some U.S. Marines, eight prisoners knelt in the dirt,
hands behind them and hoods on their heads. Soldiers said they were
suspected Islamic militants from France, Algeria, Egypt and Jordan.
A battalion commander said they were mercenaries who'd come to Iraq
"to do only one thing, and that is to kill Americans."
Iraq has claimed that thousands of Arab volunteers seeking
martyrdom have arrived in the country to fight U.S. troops.
During the celebrating at al-Firdos Square, Ali Abu Omar, a
40-year-old engineer at the nearby Ibn al-Haitham hospital, asked a
reporter to come away from the crowd.
"These are the very people who cheered Saddam for years," he
whispered, pointing, apparently still fearing the "ears" of the
regime that has terrified Iraqis for nearly 30 years.
It was not surprising that some Iraqis still feared Saddam, even
with U.S. forces in the heart of their capital.
The regime's propaganda tools have continued to function since
the U.S.-led war on Iraq began March 20, with newspapers publishing
every day without fail. State radio Baghdad was still broadcasting
excerpts of Saddam's speeches on Wednesday afternoon. State
television went off the air only Tuesday, even though transmitters
were repeatedly hit by coalition aircraft and missiles.
"Iraq, God willing will be victorious with the wisdom of its
mujahid (holy warrior) leader Saddam Hussein," was the banner
headline in Wednesday's Al-Jumhuriya newspaper.
EDITOR'S NOTE Associated Press writers Chris Tomlinson with the
Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Alexandra Zavis with the 3rd Marine
Aircraft Wing, Broadcast News reporter Ross Simpson and photographer
Jerome Delay contributed to this report.
photo credit
and caption:
Iraqis use their shoes to hit
the remains of a statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Bagdhad,
Iraq Wednesday April 9, 2003. (AP Photo/Jerome
Delay)
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