Several newspapers were reluctant to declare complete victory for the coalition however, noting that the whereabouts of Hussein and his sons was still unknown.

While Japan's newspapers welcomed Saddam's fall and a likely swift end to the war, the country's largest ciculation Yomiuri Shimbun said the fact Hussein was still at large put a dampener on the mood of jubilation.

"We should not be optimistic while President Hussein's fate is still unclear," the Yomiuri said.

With the end of the war looming, the liberal Asahi Shimbun expressed concern over post-war reconstruction. "The real challenge starts now," the influential daily said in an editorial.

In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, most newspapers put the dramatic pictures of Saddam's statue being pulled down on their front pages.

The Muslim-oriented Republika daily used a picture of the statue still standing with a Stars and Stripes flag draped on its face alongside the headline: "The occupation forces control Baghdad."

Another newspaper, Jakarta's Kompas daily, said in an editorial that despite Wednesday's revelries, the war was not over and conflicting statements from both sides made "the real conditions of the war vague."

Manila's Today newspaper highlighting the frenzied looting that soldiers did little to stop, featuring a photograph of Iraqis carting away booty while soldiers looked on.

But the overwhelming tenor of reports was jubilant, with Australia's Sydney Morning Herald trumpeting in a headline: "Mobs turn on Saddam: 'He killed millions of us...Oh people, this is freedom'."

Other Australian newspapers carried simple headlines such as: "Freedom", "Baghdad Falls" and "End of a tyrant."

Mass circulation Urdu language dailies in Pakistan splashed in their headlines the fall of Saddam government and widespread looting and sporadic resistance in Baghdad.

Seoul's Yonhap news agency said in a commentary that the US-led victory in Iraq could help strengthen a hard-line policy on North Korea, which has been a part of Bush's "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

"It seems to be certain for the hard-liner policy on North Korea's nuclear issue would dominate in the US," Yonhap said.

Others, though, reserved the events in Baghdad for their inside pages. Japan's sports-oriented tabloids reserved their front pages for the first Major League Baseball home run hit by New York Yankee's new Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui, who moved to the US this season after 10 years in Japan.

The Chinese press, which has given extensive coverage to the Iraq war, Thursday largely relegated the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the inside pages and blasted the US' killing of foreign journalists this week.

"The havoc invading US troops wreaked on the international press in Baghdad on Tuesday was nothing short of a war crime," the China Daily said in an opinion piece.

SPACE.WIRE