US commanders indicated that the seizure of Tikrit, the last Iraqi city still outside coalition control, likely marked the final major military engagement of the campaign launched on March 20, although fighting was not yet over.

“Clearly we are at a point when the decisive military operations that were focused on removing the regime ... that work is coming to a close,” Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at the US command’s war headquarters in Qatar. “We believe our decisive operations campaign will be measured in weeks not months,” he said on day 26 of the war, with operations now to shift focus to “stability and support”.

After airstrikes throughout the night US armor poured into Tikrit, meeting resistance only on the edges of Saddam’s tribal stronghold 180 kilometers north of Baghdad. Five armored vehicles were deployed in a main square of the city early yesterday.

Sgt. Robert Chute said three US Marine reconnaissance battalions entered the city before dawn. Firefights with what Chute believed to be Iraqi soldiers had left at least one Iraqi dead, while US units reported no wounded or dead. “My feeling is this means the end of the war,” Chute said. “We didn’t encounter any resistance in the city, but only on the outskirts last night.”

US forces got little welcome from Tikrit residents, with the city’s streets deserted in the morning and only a handful later emerging to catch a glimpse of the US troops.

US Central Command said some Saddam loyalists in Tikrit had not given up the fight, but a spokesman said the US military no longer considered the Iraqi Army an effective force. “The Iraqi military appears to be over as an organized fighting force,” Capt. Frank Thorp told reporters at US Central Command.

“But it is premature to say the war is over as long as there continues to be resistance.”

The search for new leadership for the country is to move forward today when Iraqi opposition groups gather in the southern city of Nassiriyah for the first time since Saddam’s fall. But Ahmad Chalabi, tipped to be the country’s next leader, will not attend and in an interview in the French daily Le Monde said he would not seek a post in the interim administration.

“I am not a candidate for any post,” said Chalabi, head of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress opposition group.

Chalabi had backing from only parts of the US administration and remains an unknown quantity for most Iraqis.

Saddam himself has remained elusive although the coalition has had some success in tracking down top Iraqi officials.

The Pentagon confirmed that Saddam’s half-brother Watban Ibrahim Hasan had been captured near the border with Syria trying to flee the country.

Another half-brother, Barzan Al-Tikriti, was killed Friday in a US airstrike.

Top Iraqi nuclear scientist Jaffar Al-Jaffar also surrendered in recent days. His surrender follows that of Lt. Gen. Amir Saadi, Saddam’s chief scientific adviser, who turned himself in on Saturday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the hunt for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction has begun, with seven of 146 suspected sites identified by coalition forces before the campaign begun having been searched.