As the fall of Baghdad appeared increasingly likely, dozens of people still struggled to put their names down on forms which have been available at the offices of the lawyers' grouping since Thursday.

Sayed Shaaban, the association's official responsible for handling the volunteers, admitted however that no one has yet left for Iraq from Egypt.

He said the bar association, which is dominated by the opposition radical Muslim Brotherhood, received the applications and sorted them to ensure candidates met the conditions required, notably a clean criminal record and a passport.

They were then passed on to the Iraqi embassy here to be given visas.

US military officers in Iraq say their troops have encountered fighters of various nationalities, including Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis and Syrians.

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