Looters take advantage of push into Baghdad

Outside Baghdad - It was a tale of two columns outside Iraq's capital on Monday.

As US marines in tanks headed into Baghdad, looters who had liberated the contents of a machinery warehouse headed in the opposite direction with their spoils.

Some waved and grinned at the Americans as they passed.

"They were literally emptying the premises," said Reuters correspondent Matthew Green, who is travelling with the marines.

Scores of people, many young men of military age, made off with generators on hand trolleys, donkey carts or the occasional truck from a light industrial complex bearing the sign General Automatic Machine Trading Co.

In a country where the electricity supply has been disrupted by the war, home generators are a prized item.

Hundreds of people jostled at the gates to get in.

Half a dozen or so young men wheeled away gleaming red motorcycles.

A couple of looters made off on pint-sized bulldozers, driving them past the roaring columns of Marine tanks and armoured vehicles heading for Baghdad.

Commanders of the US-led invasion forces have said they will try to contain looting that has broken out in the wake of the defeat of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's Baath party administration in much of south and central Iraq.

But the commander of British forces in Iraq, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, speaking of Basra in the south, said looting came as no surprise. "It's almost an inevitability," he said.