Iraq ordered the evacuation of non-emergency patients from Baghdad hospitals yesterday as fears of a US air attack escalated. It was not clear how many patients would be removed. Dr Hassan Abdel Jabar said his hospital in the central area would accept only emergency cases "because we are expecting a strike by the Americans".
Thousands of Iraqi civilians, meanwhile, flocked to President Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad and industrial installations around the capital to join other people serving as human shields. Cursing the US and chanting slogans praising President Saddam, several hundred Iraqi families occupied a textile factory and a power plant in Baghdad as human shields against any military attack.
Mrs Zahra Muhsen (54) spread her small carpet between two large engines as her nine children squatted nearby.
"This is our factory. We have come to die here. We'll stay and sleep here and fear no bombs or missiles," she said.
Baghdad's textile factory on the western edge of the Iraqi capital escaped bombing during the 1991 Gulf War which ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Officials fear it could be a target if hostilities flare up again.
"In every strategic installation in Iraq there will be hundreds of people - women, children and the elderly. We want to die if the Americans attack us again," said Ms Ridha Abdullah (34).
Officials say Mr Saddam's presidential palaces across the country have already been occupied by families who volunteered as human shields. Television shows daily scenes of people marching towards the palaces. They enter along boulevards lined with palm trees, and are shown into marble-floored halls adorned with inscriptions from the Quran.
"This is a popular and voluntary movement, expressing the real feelings of the Iraqis," the Foreign Minister, Mr Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, said at a news conference on Saturday. "They are not going only to the presidential palaces. The majority are going to factories, industrial installations. . .We are not going to prevent it - on the contrary."
Officials say there will be human shields at all possible target sites. "We defend this factory against the evils [Americans]. If they hit, they should realise we are here and are ready to die," said one woman.
"This human shield business will make the job of US `smart' weapons difficult. If the Iraqis are serious, any attack on such sites will entail human losses," said one diplomat.
Mr Khalid Ismael (42) has been working in a Baghdad power plant for 20 years. He brought his wife and four children to sleep there.
"We have been suffering for seven years from hunger and disease. Enough is enough. Let us die together. It can't be worse," he said of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.