But as Saddam's remaining vestiges of control slipped away, so did law and order as city after city plunged deeper into chaos and anarchy, with widespread looting and shooting creating havoc on the streets.

Kurdish peshmergas raised an opposition flag over city hall in Mosul after entering overnight, and US Central Command in Qatar said the oil-rich city was now under coalition control.

"Mosul and Kirkuk have fallen," said Major Rumi Nielson-Green, referring to the other principal northern Iraqi city, which was taken over by Kurdish and US forces Thursday.

"Coalition forces are inside the cities," she said. "They are mostly special operations forces."

She said members of the Iraqi 5th Corps in and around the Mosul surrendered to coalition troops. "They made a very wise decision to live for a free Iraq rather that die for Saddam Hussein's regime," she said.

Top US military commander General Tommy Franks said Saddam and the Iraqi regime were either dead or running.

"Vow, they are either dead or they are running like hell," Franks, the commander of US forces in Iraq, told reporters at Bagram airbase 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the Afgani capital of Kabul.

"That is the case with the leadership of the regime inside Iraq," he said.

One witness in Mosul, Hussein Said, told AFP: "The Iraqi soldiers have abandoned their weapons and gone home."

In several districts people were seen taking furniture and anything else they could carry from the official buildings not already destroyed by the intense coalition air strikes.

An AFP correspondent saw no sign of US special forces in the city.

Earlier Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman Hoshyar Zebari said Iraqi military officers in Mosul had been negotiating a surrender to US troops.

"Since the war is continuing, the American officers want a formal surrender," he said. "We have reassured the people of Mosul that we will help them."

Close US ally Turkey has repeatedly threatened to intervene militarily in northern Iraq if Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk or Mosul, fearing it could ignite a drive for independence among its own large Kurdish population.

General "Mam" Rostam, a commander of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the other main Kurdish faction governing Iraqi Kurdistan, said the Kurdish forces had been ordered to leave the city by Saturday.

Meanwhile a US Central Command spokesman told AFP that coalition air strikes were pounding the area around Tikrit, Saddam's homeland and the site of his traditional tribal power base north of Baghdad.

An unknown number of Iraqi forces are believed to be in the area, including fighters from his Republican Guard.

In Baghdad, US forces were trying to secure the city following a suicide bombing on Thursday which killed at least one US soldier. US forces still faced occasional heavy fire from pro-regime forces.

The bombing happened north of the Palestine Hotel in the heart of the city where the foreign press is staying, according to Major Matt Baker of the US Marines.

It was the first suicide attack against American forces since they captured the capital amid scenes of jubilation and looting Wednesday, and raised fresh doubts about how firm a grip coalition forces held on the city.

It was the third suicide bombing against coalition troops since the war was launched on March 20.

In two separate incidents, shopkeepers armed with assault rifles, pistols or iron bars opened fire on groups trying to ransack their shops.

Twenty-five people were admitted to the city's Al-Kindi hospital after suffering gunshot wounds in clashes during looting, hospital sources told AFP, although it was unclear if they were wounded in these incidents.

On the outskirts of Nasiriyah in the south, US troops continued to face pockets of resistance.

In Iraq's second-largest city of Basra, overrun by UK troops on Sunday, British plans to put a tribal leader in temporary charge have received a mixed reaction.

But many fear it has been reduced to a town of thieves and criminals, with British troops either unable or unwilling to stop it.

"Even if we hated Saddam, with him at least people weren't out breaking the law because they were afraid of what would happen to them," said one Basra shopkeeper.

Nielson-Green confirmed Iraqi opposition leaders would meet soon in southern Iraq.

She said representatives "from across all of Iraqi society, including expatriates" would attend the gathering, along with the US envoy to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

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