Residents walk down the nearly deserted streets as smoke billows in Tikrit, Iraq (AP)
U.S. Faces Resistance in Tikrit Story aired: Monday, April 14, 2003
Tikrit is the Iraqi city nearest the little town of Awja, where Saddam Hussein was born.
About 100 miles north of Baghdad, Tikrit's connections to Saddam led some to predict a final, climactic, do-or-die battle there. About a fourth of Saddam Hussein's senior leadership came from Tikrit.
Monday morning, U.S. troops entered the center of the city, which for symbolic power arguably ranks with the toppling of the Saddam statue in downtown Baghdad.
