- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A city
with a looming battle hanging over its head, Baghdad is bundle of contradictions.
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- Municipality workers clad in orange uniforms methodically
cleared pavements on Thursday of broken trees and debris from another round
of bombing.
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- At the old Shorga market, more shops selling food and
spices reopened.
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- Even the red double-decker buses were running on time.
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- But as night fell on the Iraqi capital the daytime trappings
of normality slipped away.
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- The electricity went off for the first time since the
war began on March 20, U.S. planes made fresh raids and U.S. forces launched
an assault on the city's international airport.
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- After midnight, a series of 20 loud explosions could
be heard from the southern outskirts of the city. More than a dozen explosions
rocked the city center, as the raids moved closer.
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- Saddam and his entourage have promised invading U.S.
and British forces bloody street battles if they try to take the capital
by force.
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- But aside from artillery fire near the airport, the Iraqi
response in the capital was strangely muted.
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- PREPARATIONS FOR A FIGHT
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- Preparations have been discreet, but there are signs
that the city's defenders are bracing themselves for what could be the
biggest urban battle since World War II.
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- Pick-up trucks equipped with machine guns and anti-aircraft
guns are dotted across the city. Some defenders walk around with rocket-propelled
grenade launchers. Four-wheel drive vehicles carry mobile communications
systems.
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- But, at the same time, traffic flows normally during
the day, with no sign of military checkpoints.
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- Saddam International Airport, the target of a U.S. assault
around nightfall, has been shut since U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq
on March 20.
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- But a Reuters journalist who visited the airport on Thursday
with Iraqi officials said it appeared empty. Two Iraqi planes were parked
on the tarmac. Soldiers manned the usual checkpoint at the entrance.
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- At Mansour square on the west bank of the Tigris, a huge
bronze statue of Saddam looks toward the horizon.
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- Traffic flowed steadily and all the wide thoroughfares
of Baghdad and there are no military checkpoints inside the city.
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- TRAPPINGS OF NORMALITY
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- "We are still selling a lot of ground beans, especially
to the paramilitary," Issa, the city's leading coffee distributor,
said in Shorga market during a daytime lull.
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- "Our main access to Dubai port is closed, but I
have tons of coffee in stock. It should last throughout the war,"
he adds, blending dark and light ground coffee with cardamom spice.
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- "My main problem is making a hawala (money transfer)
to the outside. This has stopped completely now," he says.
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- Elsewhere in Baghdad, most shops are closed.
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- The government says there is enough food to last for
a siege lasting months.
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- In the city's markets, shoppers' purchasing patterns
reflect their approach to the looming battle.
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- Some buy rope to tie luggage, a prelude to a quick departure.
Others buy large plastic containers to store water.
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- Turkish delight, an affordable sweet to keep children
happy as they stay at home under bombing, is selling fast.
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- "People are trickling out of the city, but not in
vast numbers," says Amran, whose shop at the entrance of Shorga sells
colored rope as well as porous bags for storing wheat.
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- Many of those who are staying buy television aerials
to catch four Iranian channels beaming into Iraq, including al-Alam (world),
a new station that covers the war 24 hours a day.
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- "Al Alam is the best. This will get it perfectly,"
one shopkeeper said, offering a Chinese-made aerial for $15.
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- It did, until the lights went out in Baghdad.
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