No regrets, just a wild cacophony of cheers in a Shia slum

In the sprawling, run-down suburb that bears his name it was hard to find anyone mourning the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

On the dusty road that runs along the Diyala river in east Baghdad there was a cacophonous row from the people lining both sides of the street – shouts and cheers, a melée of thumbs-up signs and loud declarations that President Saddam was bad. "Welcome, sir", "Thank you", "We are all on your side", they cried. Lord only knows what they were saying to the US Marines armed with automatics weapons guns rather than notebooks and pens.

To be honest, it would have been astonishing if the people of Saddam City had behaved in any other way as they learnt throughout the dusty, hot day that President Saddam's regime was finally over. While this poor, cramped part of the city may be named after the Iraqi leader, there has never been any love lost between President Saddam and the 10 million people squeezed into these streets.

The reason is simple: in Saddam City, as in much of eastern Baghdad, the people are poor and they are Shia, rather than the ruling Sunni form of Islam. They are the underclass in a nation in which repression and poverty has been standard.

"We want security for our land," Hassan Salma, a friendly-looking man with a closely-cropped beard, said. "We want safety. We are not sure if Saddam Hussein has been toppled. If he has ... then, that is a different matter."

Even as fighting continued in east Baghdad, thousands of people had already decided that President Saddam was no more and they were making the most of the situation – looting whatever they could find while they had the chance.

The scenes of looting over recent days as the regime's power has steadily withered have been astonishing. People have been taking anything they can, by whatever means possible. Small children walk past pushing purloined office chairs, stacked with tables and other furniture. Women with black veils wander along the road weighed down with a dozen plastic jerry cans. Seven spanking new combine harvesters were counted on the roads yesterday morning.

"The most astonishing thing I saw was at a fish farm where they had come to get the fish," Major Mark Steinbrook, a civil affairs group officer with the US Marines, said. "There were dozens of people just scooping fish out of these ponds and taking them away however they could – wrapped up in shirts and jackets. This morning I stopped two men driving away with a new firetruck. They were not wearing big red hats, so I doubted it belonged to them."

While the looting is something that the US and British forces are keen to stop as soon as possible, there appears to be nothing menacing about it. Rather, it seems, people are looting almost as a form of celebration, making the most of a power vacuum which they have never before experienced. And the looting has been almost entirely from military and government premises rather than private homes.

Yesterday afternoon The Independent encountered a group of people joyously looting a Republican Guard military college close to the Rashid district of the city. It appeared that they had discovered the food store, because dozens of people were coming away with multipacks of jars of tomato sauce – the sort one might pour over pasta.

"We have never seen this before," laughed Karim Mohammed, 23, who said he was unemployed because he was not a member of President Saddam's Baath Party. "We don't know what it is. Tonight we will taste it!"

What gave them the right, they were asked, to take these things? "These are public funds," replied La'ith, a young man who claimed to have been a member of the Iraqi youth football team but was thrown out because he was not a party member. "This food and things were taken by Saddam from the people for 35 years. Now we are taking it back."

All of the looters were Shia and all claimed to have suffered because of this at the hands of the state. One man, Jafir Chiad, claimed that he and his fellow looters had been stopped from practicing their religion four years ago when there was a Shia uprising in Saddam City after the assassination of the Shia Grand Ayatollah al-Sadr and two of his sons. The state was blamed for the killings.

"I was taken to prison for a year for no reason," he said, displaying scars on his arms. "I was tortured. I was tortured so much that even my skin came off." Some of the looters complained that they had no idea of what was going on in the outside world. The young footballer professed a love of David Beckham and knew that he wore the number seven jersey, but when he was informed that the England midfielder played for Manchester United he looked bemused. "I have never heard of this," he said. "You see – we know nothing. I want a satellite and a television. I want a mobile phone."

The poor of Iraq are hoping that better days are ahead and that life will be less of a struggle. "Will there be food to eat?" one man asked. But they are worried about the future, about how long the Allied forces will stay. The Shia of Iraq have been let down before and they are wary of celebrating too much, too soon.

Amar Ali, a teacher, said: "Even in 10 years time we will still be afraid of Saddam Hussein. We cannot believe he is going to die or go away."