Power vacuum angers Iraqis

By Caroline Hawley BBC correspondent in Baghdad

About 50 Iraqis on Friday became the first looters to be taken to jail since Baghdad fell to US forces last month.

Had Saddam Hussein still been in power, the men would each have had their right hand cut off for theft.

Few in Iraq are sorry he and his reign of terror are gone. But Iraqis now want a new Iraqi-led government to be set up urgently to fill the power vacuum.

The collapse of the Baath regime unleashed widespread looting

Doctors and nurses have not been paid since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled. Ambulance workers are volunteering their services.

Many drugs still are not available. But Dr Waed Loues, of Baghdad's main children's hospital, says the main problem for the hospital is security.

"Some thieves and drunks have attacked the hospital, and tried to steal things," Dr Loues said.

"Some days they shoot the tyres off ambulances. They shoot above us and take some things from the pharmacy."

Security is one major problem in the new Iraq, a lack of basic services is another.

Most civil servants have not worked for weeks. Much of Baghdad is still without electricity.

The streets are littered with uncollected rubbish, and some areas are awash with sewage.

Unicef, the UN children's fund, is worried about a new outbreak of diarrhoea among babies.

Many Iraqis are angered by the continuing chaos

"The children of Iraq cannot wait longer for the social services to return to their pre-war levels," Unicef official Hatim Hatim said.

"All parties concerned should make serious effort to take these basic services to their pre-war levels."

Before the war about a quarter of Iraqi children were malnourished.

Now there are no statistics, and no-one knows for sure how many Iraqis died as a direct result of the war, or how many silent victims have been claimed by its aftermath.

Promises

Ordinary Iraqis do not need to hear from Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq remains "dangerous".

To America and its allies we say: Where are your honeysweet promises?

Sheikh Ahmad al-Issawi

Gunfire can still be heard in Baghdad at regular intervals. The city is awash with guns and, for the most part, no-one knows exactly who is firing at whom.

Iraqis are, for the most part, grateful to the Americans for ridding them of Saddam Hussein, whose portraits and statues are now defaced and destroyed across Baghdad.

But there is widespread frustration at the continuing chaos in the city.

"Where is the government?" asked Sheikh Ahmad al-Issawi in his sermon for Friday prayers.

"To America and its allies we say: Where are your honeysweet promises? Now is the time to fulfil them."