Papers depict Saddam 'toppled'

Papers depict Saddam 'toppled'

The papers are filled with pictures and reports of the jubilation in Baghdad.

But the front pages are dominated by what the Times calls the most enduring image of all - the toppling of a giant bronze statue of Saddam Hussein.

Several carry full-length pictures of the tumbling statue with an accompanying headline.

The Daily Mirror and the Sun proclaim it with some irony as the "Statue of Liberty".

The Mail and Express front pages say simply "Toppled", while the Telegraph and the Independent go for "The toppling of Saddam".

The Express masthead incorporates the American and British flags, with the words "Historic Edition".

Its front page spreads out across the back to carry further images of scenes it says are reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Times carries a sonnet written 200 years ago which it believes best sums up the fall of what it calls the "vainglorious tyrant".

'Drunk'

Inside all the papers, there are graphic accounts of the moments leading to the destruction of the statue.

"Going, going, gone", is how one headline in the Express puts it.

The Guardian's correspondent in Baghdad says the toppling forced Saddam to bow before his people - but she describes it as a halting and hesitant process.

It was as if, the Mirror points out, the statue was reluctant to give up the power it symbolised.

For the Independent, it slumped at first like an incapable drunk, then crashed to the ground.

That, the Financial Times declares, was the moment the world saw that a regime which had held the Iraqi people in its grip for three decades had finally crumbled.

Freed at last from his regime of terror and torture, the Sun says, Iraqis leapt on the effigy the moment it hit the ground.

They were expressing their contempt for Saddam Hussein in the most powerful way they knew, according to the Times.

Among the other scenes from this momentous day, the Mirror shows an Iraqi man welcoming an American soldier with a kiss on the cheek, the Times carries a picture of a Baghdad resident offering a US marine a cigarette and the Sun has one of another fallen statue being dragged along behind a car.

Booty

There are also many descriptions of what the Guardian calls the frenzy of looting which followed the collapse of the Iraqi regime - with each trying to find the most bizarre examples.

According to the Sun, a brand new combine harvester was seen being driven along one road.

The Telegraph reports that a man led away a magnificent thoroughbred by the bridle, apparently from the personal stable of Saddam Husein's son, Uday.

A cartoon in the Independent shows Iraqis running off with furniture, rugs and ornamental pots, alongside American leaders taking away barrels of oil.

The Times correspondent Stephen Farrell saw looting by car, by ponytrap and by makeshift sled.

Suddenly, he says, shoulders were things to carry booty on, not to look over.