Convoys flee intense Baghdad bombardment
Anticipating an intense battle, Iraqi civilians packed food and belongings into trucks, buses and cars, in a mass exodus from the city's northern and north-eastern districts.
Civilians trying to escape the fighting around the airport, just 12 miles south-west of the city centre, fled into Baghdad in vehicles piled high with blankets and possessions.
"It was a night of hell," said one trembling woman.
"We thought they had entered Baghdad, there were planes all night dropping bombs and there was shelling all night," she said.
In central areas, many residents stayed indoors, leaving the streets largely to knots of armed militiamen.
Some witnesses described bumper- to-bumper lines of vehicles extending for up to six miles. Many were headed to the province of Diala, north-east of the capital.
After the capture of Baghdad's airport, the capital is now in range of the rockets and artillery of US forces who have driven over 300 miles from Kuwait since starting the war on March 20.
Earlier, Health Minister Omeed Medhat Mubarak said hospitals in the capital were swamped with wounded.
At al-Yarmouk hospital, doctors and nurses scrambled to cope with the rush of casualties including civilians and soldiers from the Republican Guard.
The injured could be heard crying in pain. Those too weak to talk pointed to their bloodied bandages and wounds.
"The aggression is not differentiating between civilians and military," Mubarak said.
The hospitals had generators so they could operate despite a power outage that began Thursday night the first widespread outage in the capital since the war began March 20. US military officials said they had not targeted Baghdad's power grid.
A sustained loss of electricity would mean the disruption of water supply and sewage, which could spread disease at a time of rising temperatures. Some parts of the city of 5 million had no running water.
Some of the injured at al-Yarmouk said they were from the Furat and al-Radwaniyah districts, both close to the airport. People at the hospital said dozens had been killed in the two districts, but that could not be confirmed.
Despite the conflict, traffic on the streets was about normal early on Friday, the Muslim day of rest, and many shops were open.
Bakeries, grocers and barber shops some without power and many appeared to be doing a brisk business. There were long lines at gas stations and some buses were running.
By late afternoon, gas station lines grew much longer and some neighbourhoods, especially those in the south, were quieter than usual.
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