The US-led war on Iraq has left many cities without power or water supplies, government buildings burned and looted and a security situation so bad that many essential workers are too frightened to report for duty.

"This country has collapsed. Nothing works -- no phones, no electricity, no schools, no proper medical care, no transportation, nothing," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad.

"It's more than bringing in food or tablets of aspirin. The basic services need to be restored and a new civil administration must be set up to answer people's needs."

While a convoy of 50 trucks carrying food aid headed to Baghdad from Jordan, the few aid agencies operating in the capital said they were concentrating their efforts on restoring water supplies in the city and ensuring hospitals had power.

Damage caused by US-led bombing or sabotage by officials of Saddam Hussein's crumbling regime cut water supplies across northern Baghdad and in many other cities across Iraq.

Water is now flowing to most homes in the capital after ICRC engineers repaired the Qanat water treatment plant in the north of the city, which was damaged in a US air raid.

"Water was the priority because we wanted to stop epidemics. Now Baghdad has water, Basra has water. We are now looking at other cities such as Nassiriya, Najaf and Mosul," Huguenin- Benjamin said.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the damaged water supply had been the biggest problem.

"We're seeing increased diarrhea, increased malnutrition and potentially life threatening diseases because of the lack of water," she said in an interview with CNN.

Nearly all of Baghdad, a city of five million people, is still without power. The water plants need generators to operate, as do the hospitals.

"It's getting better but clearly conditions have deteriorated, basic services aren't functioning and looting continues to go," Bellamy said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Baghdad hospitals also needed oxygen cylinders and hygiene at some was very poor.

On the positive side, at least five medical supply warehouses in the city were still intact despite earlier fears they had been looted and destroyed, WHO said in a statement.

A major communicable disease laboratory in the capital looted earlier this week was unlikely to pose a health risk.

The WHO said that in Mosul, 50-70 percent of health services were operating and that looting there had not been as bad as in other centers, though many people still needed health care.

Safe to Return?

Most aid groups, including United Nations agencies, evacuated their foreign staff before the US bombing began and staff are only slowly returning given the uncertain security.

Many will find their offices and stores looted or destroyed.

"Our stores were hit by missiles and were burned," said Mohamed Saeed, a Care International coordinator in Baghdad. "We have very little left in the way of supplies but our technicians are now concentrating on fixing generators for the hospitals."

Most Iraqis stocked up on food and supplies before the war, and were given double rations under the UN oil-for-food deal.

But 60 percent of the population depends on those rations and Huguenin-Benjamin said it was only a matter of time before people began to wonder "where their next meal is coming from."

Aid agencies have demanded US and British forces secure safe corridors to allow them to bring in supplies stockpiled in neighboring countries. As yet, only a few aid flights and road convoys have delivered aid to south and central Iraq.

A World Food Program convoy with 1,400 tonnes of wheat flour neared the outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, in the first attempt by the UN agency to make the journey since war began.

"Although we have no reports of food shortages we assume the stocks will start depleting by early May," said Maarten Roest, a WFP spokesman in the Jordanian capital Amman. "It's important to get the food in the warehouses so we can start distributions as soon as possible."

(China Daily April 20, 2003)