BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Iraq (news - web sites) grappled with looting and civil disorder, scattered gun fights, the brutal murder of a Shi'ite religious leader in a holy shrine and a suicide bomb attack on Thursday, which shattered much of the euphoria that had marked the end of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule.
As reality set in following Wednesday's wild celebrations, the United States also faced political complications with Turkey after Kurdish fighters took the northern city of Kirkuk in a bloodless rout of Iraqi forces.
Some U.S. troops also entered the key oil center and were moving reinforcements to take control of the city while a Kurdish commander said his men would pull out by Friday.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said some U.S. troops were moving into Iraq's third city of Mosul after signs of Iraqis surrendering in the area.
"Within recent hours I'm told that in Mosul there appears to be an opportunity for the regular Iraqi forces to turn in their weapons and no longer pose a threat, in which case Kurdish forces and U.S. forces in small numbers are in the process of moving into Mosul," he said.
In the holy city of Najaf, Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei and an aide were stabbed and shot to death by a mob in an attack in the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, the city's holiest shrine. The killings seemed certain to widen divisions and sow hatred among Shi'ites, who are 60 percent of the population.
"This mob armed to the hilt with knives and guns entered the mosque," Ma'ad Fayad, an Iraqi journalist with the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, told Reuters.
"They grabbed hold of the Imam and stabbed him. Then they shot him. The sanctuary became a battlefield," he said.
Abdul Majid had returned to Iraq only last week but his presence had provoked intense criticism from other Iraqi Shi'ite dissidents keen to assert their authority after the fall of Saddam.
A day after U.S. forces drove tanks into the heart of Baghdad to cheers from Iraqis, Saddam's whereabouts were still unknown. Some of the soldiers and paramilitaries who enforced his once-fearsome rule continued to fight on his behalf and looters ransacked the homes of government officials.
SUICIDE BOMBING
A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a U.S. checkpoint in the capital.
"Some are dead in the attack but I don't know how many," Marine officer Matt Baker told Reuters. Some U.S. news networks said four U.S. soldiers were wounded.
The attack came hours after one Marine was killed and more than 20 wounded in a four-hour battle with Saddam loyalists firing from the Imam al-Adham Mosque on the eastern bank of the Tigris river.
In the three-week war prior to the latest losses, U.S. forces had suffered 105 dead. Another 11 were listed as missing. Britain had 30 of its troops killed. There is no authoritative estimate for Iraqi military and civilian casualties but they certainly run into the thousands.
The immediate problem facing U.S. invaders was quelling remaining pockets of resistance and restoring a vestige of law and order (news - Y! TV). Mostly, they did not try to check the rampant looting that exploded in Baghdad and other cities.
Looters carted off bottles of wine and whiskey, guns and paintings of half-naked women from the luxury home of Uday, the playboy son of Saddam Hussein. They also picked clean his yacht and made off with some of the white Arabian horses he kept.
What they could not carry, they trashed.
Looters also descended on the homes Saddam's feared cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's right-hand man.
International aid officials criticized U.S. and British troops for failing to rein in looting mobs, saying they were obliged as an occupying force under international law to prevent chaos.
"The picture is a very dark one. There is absolutely no security on the street," said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the United Nations (news - web sites) Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI).
"There is widespread looting and every official building and most of the U.N. compounds have been looted. Humanitarian assistance will be hurt," she added.
The United States is trying to organize a meeting in southern Iraq this weekend of Iraqi opposition leaders, both from outside and inside the country to start the process of selecting an interim government.
HUMANITARIAN PUSH UNDERWAY
A humanitarian effort to bring food and other supplies to Iraq was beginning. Pentagon (news - web sites) spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said a British ship unloaded over 200,000 tons of food, water and medicine at the port of Umm Qasr.
"The United States sent off two ships from Galveston (Texas) with a total of more than 50,000 tons of wheat for Iraq. Australia is shipping 100,000 tons of wheat," she said.
The United States has still not confirmed finding any of the weapons of mass destruction it said Iraq had been hiding -- the issue which prompted the invasion.
Military officials cautioned that the war was still not over. Saddam's home town and power center of Tikrit was still not subdued and dangerous pockets of resistance remained elsewhere, including in Baghdad.
U.S. planes bombed positions held by non-Iraqi Arab fighters in the western Mansur district close to an Iraqi secret police building.
In the north, hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas 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 percent of Iraq's oil revenue, their capital. Turkomans claim it as theirs.
"It's the first time I've been happy in 50 years," said one exulted Kurd, Abu Sardar Mostafa.
Turkey fears Iraqi Kurds could use the city's wealth to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands among its own Kurdish minority.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, commander of one of the two main Kurdish factions, said he had ordered his fighters to pull out of Kirkuk by Friday, to ease Turkish concerns.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Washington had assured Ankara U.S. forces would remove Kurdish fighters from the city and the White House said U.S. forces would soon take control of the region.
A dozen U.S. tanks and other armored vehicles were seen rolling toward Iraq's third city of Mosul, making their debut on the northern front in the war, now in its fourth week.
U.S. Lieutenant Mark Kitchens said elements of Iraq's Republican Guard were gathering around Mosul and Tikrit. U.S. planes were bombing those formations.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said a Baghdad hospital, stretched to capacity treating war wounded, was ransacked on Thursday.
Spokeswoman Nada Doumani said the Al Kindi hospital was attacked by a group of armed looters who had stripped it of everything, including beds, electrical fittings and equipment.
"Security in the city is very bad and people are not daring to go to the hospitals," she told Reuters. "Small hospitals have closed their doors and big hospitals are inaccessible."