Five armoured vehicles were deployed in a main square of the town, 180 kilometres (115 miles) north of Baghdad, after three marine reconnaissance battalions entered it before dawn, meeting no resistance, a US sergeant said.

They posted themselves at the foot of a statue portraying Saddam mounted on a horse.

At US Central Command's forward headquarters in Qatar, officers said occasional resistance had been encountered on the outskirts of Tikrit. They declined to declare the city as being under full control of coalition forces.

It was deserted of Iraqi regular troops and much of its 100,000 population, although a handful of Tikritis emerged from their homes to catch a glimpse of the US troops.

Marine Sergeant Robert Chute said: "My feeling is this means the end of the war.

"We didn't encounter any resistance in the city, but only on the outskirts last night. We had bad ambushes there."

Firefights with what Chute believed to be Iraqi soldiers had left at least one Iraqi dead, while US units reported no wounded or dead.

"I thought they were Iraqi soldiers because we found some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) there. We had no casualties," the sergeant said.

An official announcement of the fall of Tikrit would signal the symbolic end of Saddam's regime in the US-led war launched on March 20. Tikrit was the last major town not under the control of coalition forces.

US forces were not met with the sort of welcome seen in Baghdad last week, the marine sergeant said.

Resistance had been reduced by air and artillery strikes before the ground troops moved in, covered by Cobra helicopter gunships which could be seen making low-level passes over the city.

SPACE.WIRE