IT WAS afternoon when the soldiers began to disappear. First residents noticed a few checkpoints left unguarded, then whole positions abandoned until word spread that the military who held Mosul had vanished.

The police were gone as well; government officials, too. The realisation dawned that no one was in charge. Then the looting began as people broke into government offices to drag off furniture and equipment and then, as the hysteria spread, into shops, banks, universities and hospitals.

Mosul had fallen from the regime’s control straight into the throes of anarchy as people fought in the streets for their share of the spoils.

Saddam’s rule might have been over, but there was no celebrating in this loyal city; people were too busy looting.

Crowds smashed glass doors to force their way into the Central Bank of Iraq building to plunder the coffers of banknotes bearing their President’s head. Some stuffed their sweaters full of dinars; others grabbed boxes piled with wads of banknotes and ran with them into the street.

Fights broke out as others saw the rich pickings and fought for them. In the middle of one crowd, a man pulled a pistol and began firing to protect his booty, shooting two people and sending them sprawling in the confetti of old shredded banknotes ankle-deep in the gutter.

A tall man with mournful eyes pushed forward clutching a little blue book in his hands. He pointed at the numbers written inside as the looters pushed past him. “I had two and a half million dinars in the bank,” he said, and then fell silent, holding back tears. One smiling looter running from the bank said that he was an army sergeant who had deserted his post the day before.

Another man shouted, shaking his finger in anger: “Where’s the peace that George Bush promised us? There is no government, no security. Is this it?” People crowded round, venting their anger, faces hostile and unforgiving, blaming the Americans, the Kurds, Saddam’s people. But it was clear who was carrying out the destruction. Mosul did not have the look of a city liberated so much as a city being torn apart by its own people.

It was not just the symbols of the old regime that were being targeted. Fewer than a third of the portraits of Saddam were touched, shunned for more lucrative targets.

Crushed tablets and broken ampoules lay in the iodine-soaked corridors of an outpatient clinic as youths carted off boxes of medicine and any equipment that they could find. Two men loaded boxes of vaccines into the back of their car. At the emergency department, casualties were being wheeled in: one man had a bullet wound in his shoulder from the bank gunfight, another had a bloodied foot from where he had dropped and smashed a television in his eagerness to gather more loot.

A chubby nurse wept over her charge. “They are looting all the hospitals. How can we treat this man?” she sobbed. “Even the ambulances have been taken.”

The head of the hospital came charging through the door at the sight of Western visitors. “This is a crime of the USA and all the world,” he bellowed. “Get out, get out.”

With the Iraqi soldiers vanished, the only guns on the streets to be seen were held by various rag-tag groups of Arab fighters, parading round the city in pick-ups, periodically letting off their weapons.

Their identity and allegiance was unclear, although some sported Iraqi army trousers teamed with Arab scarves. Ominously, a group of black-clad Fedayin militia were spotted, gathering near a bridge close to the city centre.

Then, finally, the Americans arrived, along with their Kurdish peshmerga allies, entering the city in a convoy, the Stars and Stripes fluttering in front of them. As it entered the litter-strewn streets, the unarmoured column looked dwarfed by its task. Looters stopped to stare. Some people waved, apparently more out of curiosity than enthusiasm.

“We don’t want the Americans and British here, they led us into this situation,” Ali Han, one of those watching, said. “We don’t want the Kurds either. Only Arabs should rule Arabs.” But there was little he could do to prevent the invasion. “We can’t do anything, we don’t have weapons,” he shrugged.

But someone did. As the American convoy passed an office building, a gunshot cracked through the air, aimed in their direction. As they came to a halt at the deserted governor’s building, taking up positions there, the square erupted into a cacophony of gunfire. “We’re taking rounds from five or six positions,” one special forces soldier panted. “This is bullshit.”

The special forces raced to safety as the firing continued, leaving the peshmerga holding back the looters from the bank, now with smoke curling out of its smashed windows. Plumes of smoke rose across the city as those arriving to find all the booty gone torched buildings in frustration. Minarets blared out appeals for the people to stop destroying their own city, but the pleas fell on deaf ears.

“You call this a liberation?” an onlooker said. “No, this is a destruction.”

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