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WRECKED CITY OF TEARS AND PAIN Apr 12 2003
Anton Antonowicz reports from Baghdad
DAY 23. Friday, traditionally a day of rest and a day of prayers. But instead of prostrating themselves before God, the faithful are engaging in another tradition. One of looting. One of war. One of death.
What was once chaos and anarchy now sinks into humanitarian crisis. Seventeen decomposing bodies wrapped in bloodstained blankets are buried in a mass grave in the yard of an abandoned hospital. A man running from gunfire is hit by a car and lies dying, flies already feasting off his bloodied body.
 LOOT: Women carry items from burning Baghdad building
Inside the deserted emergency room at the al-Yarmouk hospital, a hysterical man searches for his infant daughter. She had been injured when her brother brought home an unexploded bomb and it went off. When her father found her, she was dead.
"Please look at her face and see how beautiful she is," he pleaded as he removed the cover on her body. "My darling, my darling," he sobbed as he covered her head with kisses. Her eyes were half open, her nose and mouth bloodied. The face of Rowand Suleiman, born August 16, 2002, looked almost peaceful. Her father Mohammed
collapsed and began banging the back of his head against a wall. "Why? Why?" he shrieked. He is convinced the device his son brought home was an US cluster bomb.
Lawlessness prolongs Baghdad's suffering. Last night the International Committee of the Red Cross was forced to issue an urgent statement: "The medical system in Baghdad has virtually collapsed."
Back at the al-Yarmouk hospital, staff work 18-hour shifts. They have lost count of the hundreds of casualties they have treated. Today the entire staff consisted of one young doctor and three male nurses.
On Monday the hospital was hit by a missile and tank shells. The emergency generator has stopped, bodies are decomposing in the morgue. Now all that is left are darkened hallways, eerie, empty rooms, bloodstained floors, broken glass.
 CHAOS: American soldier watches as Baghdadis loot
Dozens of corpses lie rotting by roadsides or in blown-up cars. Inside the Presidential compound, US infantrymen are on burial detail. They lay the dead in the
correct manner, facing Mecca. Their graves are marked and recorded with a global positioning satellite system.
Near the airport, volunteers in masks and rubber gloves use shovels to scrape human remains from the burnt-out wrecks of cars, trucks and buses.
With no possibility of identification, corpses are buried in shallow graves on the roadside. "This is a major problem for sanitation and the water system," says one US army engineer officer. Nearby, the corpse of an airport worker rolls in the current of a pool created when a US bomb hit a water mains.
"That's Bubbling Bob," said one soldier. "Been there a while. I ain't gonna fish him out. Let the Iraqis do it."
The looting has gone on for three days now and ancient Baghdad has a new name. Swagdad.
Young and old, men and women rifle through bomb-damaged buildings as well as places that escaped the conflict. "Is this your liberation?" a shopkeeper screams at the crew of a U.S. tank as youths help themselves to everything in his hardware store. They cart their booty off in the wheelbarrows that had been on sale.
"Hell, it ain't my job to stop them," drawls one young marine, lighting a cigarette as he looks on. "Goddamn Iraqis will steal anything if you let them."
For those not helping themselves, their anger is at the US forces for doing nothing.
At first it was the government buildings which took the force of a ravenous, relieved people. The fancy cars, the leather armchairs, whatever safe or petty-cash box which still may store some treasure.
Then, as the thefts continued, it was hat and coat-stands, litterbins. Yesterday I saw two men squabbling over a plastic flower vase.
There had to be richer pickings. And perhaps there were, though looting hospitals and clinics is obviously crazy. So now we have only one functioning hospital, the Saddam General in Saddam City.
The poorest hospital in the poorest part of the capital. The hospital in which lies Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the 12-year-old boy with amputated arms and, no longer, a father, mother and younger brother.
In the frenzy and chaos of Baghdad, no aid agencies can yet safely operate. They cannot yet put to use the tens of thousands of pounds you have been moved to send.
God willing, that will come soon enough. God willing, in time for Ali.
The joy of the locals is obvious — the smiles, waves as we pass through. But so is the danger.
We find ourselves now having to operate under much tighter restrictions as a result. New rules of engagement have been activated.
Barbed wire barriers line roads, forcing traffic to weave its way forward at a snail's pace.
Cars are thoroughly searched. Any vehicle which does not stop on order is subject to warning bullets. If it continues, it will be blown to bits by a tank. I now have to have photo-ID to enter my hotel. My bag is searched. In the circumstances it is utterly right.
But it also right to say that many of these US troops are exhausted. A lot want a good shower and to get out of here. But it will be some time.
The Palestine Hotel now seems to be their centre of operations. It is ringed in steel.
Nothing is left of the crowd who gleefully tore down Saddam's statue three days ago. And nothing is left of the statue except the stumps of his leaden feet in a pair of lace-ups. Every other scrap of metal has disappeared. Saddam's nose. His upturned right arm. His thumb. Gone.
And further out more and more trails of human ants carry away anything they can, knowing for now at least, there is no one to stop them.
Once, one man and his cronies looted this nation. Now thousands of his victims have become mini-Saddams.
But it will not last for long. There isn't enough left to loot.
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