Western journalists entering the city in the wake of British forces reported thousands of looters carrying on in plain view of British troops... Mutlaq Kitab Hamud, a fifty-two-year-old cloth merchant with a shop in al-Ashar market, described the chaos of the first two days after British forces entered the city.

'I was in my shop because I was trying to protect it. The first day that the British came to central Basra, their forces stopped at the Ashar River. They were stopped on the other side of the river before noon. Their tanks were just waiting there. Then an hour or so after noon, they crossed the river and went through the streets of the center. At that time, there were two or three hundred people waiting in groups behind them. It was a big mob. Some of them had acetylene torches and welding masks, and they headed straight for the Rafidain Bank [a branch of one of Iraq's largest banking groups]. The British tanks were standing right in front, but they didn't do a thing to stop the criminals. They were even encouraging them, saying "Go in Ali Baba, go in."