Marines battle in Baghdad

Kurdish fighters took the northern city of Kirkuk yesterday in a bloodless rout of Iraqi forces while die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists and a suicide bomber attacked US troops in Baghdad.

In the holy city of Najaf, Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei was stabbed to death in an attack in the Imam Ali Mosque, a move likely to raise tension among Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority.

One day after US forces drove tanks into the heart of Baghdad to cheers from Iraqis, Saddam's whereabouts were still unknown. The soldiers and paramilitaries that enforced his once-fearsome rule continued to fight on his behalf and looters ransacked the homes of government officials.

"We are operating at will," Lieutenant Colonel Mike Culpepper of the US 3rd Infantry Division told Reuters.

"There is still more fighting to be done, however. There is still more enemy in the city and there is still enemy outside the city."

US planes bombed positions held by non-Iraqi Arab fighters in the western Mansur district close to an Iraqi secret police building, a Reuters correspondent reported.

Reuters cameraman Ahmed Bahaddou later saw US troops collecting 21 bodies, apparently Iraqi soldiers and civilians, on a road leading from Doura to the international airport. Witnesses said other corpses had already been picked up.

In the north, hundreds of Kurdish guerillas moved largely unopposed into Kirkuk, a move that sparked celebrations in the streets but alarm in Turkey. Iraqi Kurds consider the city, source of 40 per cent of Iraq's oil revenue, their capital. Turkomans claim it as theirs.

"It's under control," Mam Rostam, a commander from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Reuters.

"It's the first time I've been happy in 50 years," said one exulted Kurd, Abu Sardar Mostafa.

The mood in Ankara, however, was alarm. Turkey fears Iraqi Kurds could use the city's wealth to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands among its own Kurdish minority.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Washington had assured Ankara US forces would remove Kurdish fighters from the city.

The White House said US forces will take control of Iraq's Kirkuk region.

A dozen US tanks and other armoured vehicles were seen rolling towards Iraq's third city of Mosul, making their debut on the northern front in the war, now in its fourth week.

US Lieutenant Mark Kitchens said elements of Iraq's Republican Guard were gathering around Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace and power base north of Baghdad.

US planes were bombing those formations, he added.

As US and British forces hunted for Saddam and his aides, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair recorded a statement meant to reassure Iraqis they would control their own future.

"The nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over," Bush said in the message that was supposed to appear on a new Iraqi TV network. While it appeared on Arab language stations it did not appear in Iraq.

Some Iraqis criticised the Americans for failing to check looting in Baghdad, and warned that US forces could face a popular uprising if they stayed in the country too long.

Mehdi al-Aibi Mansur, a Shi'ite merchant who said he was glad Saddam's era was over, said: "People are no longer afraid... People will not be afraid to rise up against the Americans."

In central Iraq, the murder of Abdel Majid and an aide, which some blamed on Saddam loyalists and others on infighting, is sure to raise tensions among Iraq's majority Shi'ite population.

Majid was a close aide of Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who called on the population last week not to hinder the US and British invasion.