“Security is still a major problem for the operation of basic services. Staff are leaving hospitals early out of fear of insecurity, lawlessness and chaos in the city,” she said. Some city hospitals, which had been equipped for war surgery and sophisticated treatment, have been ransacked.

“You cannot bring in medical supplies in large quantities for fear of being looted again,” Doumani said. She said hospitals were still short of power and water, and staff had not been paid. “This affects their motivation at work. They have no clue what is going to happen next.” The US civil administration says medical staff are among public sector workers who will be paid shortly.

Doumani said the ICRC was meeting regularly with US and British military staff, urging them to protect medical staff and facilities, pay salaries and provide basic services. “We are cooperating with the coalition. Whenever we see a problem that they can address, we tell them,” she added.

The number of Iraqi children suffering from acute malnutrition has nearly doubled since the end of the war, as the country’s health care system collapsed, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday. “The rise in malnutrition shows that there is a general decline in the overall health of children,” UNICEF spokesman Geoffrey Keele told a news conference in Baghdad.

The number of children suffering from acute malnutrition has climbed to 7.7 percent from four percent since the end of the war, Keele said. “They are extremely low weight to their height,” he said, adding that there had been a sharp rise in cases of diarrhea among Iraqi children. Prior to the war, almost one million children were chronically malnourished in Iraq, with another a quarter of the million suffering from acute malnutrition, the UNICEF official said.

“Malnutrition really is a very good indicator for the overall well-being of children. It depends on so many things: access to food, access to clean water, proper sanitation, proper hygiene. Iraqi children have none of them,” he said. UNICEF said 40 percent of the water distribution network in Baghdad was damaged and some of the water damage was a direct result of the war.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair brushed aside controversy yesterday over the justification for toppling Saddam Hussein, acclaiming his troops as heroes during a lightning tour of southern Iraq. On the first visit by a Western leader to postwar Iraq, Blair also put its neighbors Iran and Syria on notice against meddling in the nation’s future or supporting terrorism.

“I know there were a lot of disagreements in the country over the wisdom of my decision to order the action,” Blair told troops at a former Saddam palace as controversy grew over the unproven claims of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “But I can assure you of one thing - there’s absolutely no dispute in Britain at all about your professionalism, your courage,” Blair added in of Basra. “When people look back on this time and look back on this conflict, I honestly believe they will see this as one of the defining moments of the century. And you did it.”

Back in Britain, however, there were new allegations that Parliament and the public were duped in the lead-up to the war on Iraq into believing allegations about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. BBC Radio quoted an unnamed senior British official as saying a dossier compiled by the intelligence services had been altered on the request of Blair’s Downing Street office to make it “sexier” by adding a statement that Saddam’s weapons could be ready for use within 45 minutes. Downing Street denied the claim.