US forces battled holdout fighters in Baghdad yesterday as rampant looting persisted in the Iraqi capital.

　　A day after US officials declared that Saddam Hussein's regime no longer controlled Baghdad, the US Central Command said American marines engaged in "intense fighting" with pro-Saddam forces at the Imam Mosque, the Az Amihyah Palace and the house of a leader of the Baath party. One US Marine was killed and up to 20 were wounded.

　　Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman at US Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said US troops acted on information that regime leaders were trying to organize a meeting in the area. During the operations, he said, Marines were fired on from the mosque compound.

　　He said he didn't know whether Saddam was among those trying to organize the meeting or whether any regime leaders were captured or killed.

　　That engagement aside, the largely one-sided battle for Baghdad appeared nearly over, and US commanders were focusing on plans to oust pro-Saddam forces from remaining strongholds - including Saddam's heavily defended hometown of Tikrit and the northern city of Mosul.

　　US military officials said in Qatar that Navy bombers and special forces teams were targeting Tikrit, 160 kilometers north of Baghdad, to ensure it does not become a new command center for the regime as Iraqi soldiers are pushedsintosthe area both from the capital and the north.

　　US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to calm fears by Iraqis and other Arabs that the coalition troops would become an occupying force.

　　"We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave," Bush said in a video message that was to be broadcast yesterday in Iraq by coalition forces.

　　Blair said, "Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors."

　　In Baghdad, thousands of people from poor outlying districts surgedsintosthe city center with wheelbarrows and pushcarts for a second day of looting, setting fires to some Interior Ministry buildings and making off with anything they could carry.

　　Civilians appeared fearful - both of US forces and of the possibility that pro-Saddam fighters were still in the city in civilian clothes.

　　One hotel manager, who declined to give his name, said, "There's one good thing only D Saddam has disappeared. Everything else is bad. There's no food, no water, and everyone is afraid."

　　Iraq says at least 600 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wound-ed since the war began.