Fighting breaks out over food in Tikrit

American troops struggled to restore order yesterday as looting, ethnic fighting and clashes between rival factions ­ and with US forces ­ broke out across Iraq.

Two days of violence in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq's third largest, left 17 people dead and 18 others injured, hospital officials said. Many of the wounded said they were shot by US troops.

"They are killing us and no one's talking about it," Zahra Yassin said at a Mosul hospital with her wounded son. "We want Saddam back. At least there was security."

In Kirkuk, the second-largest city in the north, Arab families said they had been forced from their homes by Kurds claiming ownership in the largely Kurdish city.

At a rations warehouse in Tikrit, eight people belonging to Saddam Hussein's clan attacked three men from other villages who were loading rice, sugar and milk into a pickup truck on Wednesday, the US military said.

"A lot of people from outlying towns and villages used to come here for food," a Marines officer said. "That has not happened over the last month, so they are hungry. Townspeople from Tikrit, most of them from Saddam Hussein's clan, are trying to prevent them. They are being extremely violent in their methods."