United Nations convoys have started to fan out in southern areas near the border with Kuwait and in Kurdish-controlled regions in the north of the country, officials said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is also providing medical help for war wounded and water supplies inside the capital, Baghdad, as well as around the southern city of Basra and from Erbil in northern Iraq.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) truck carrying 13 tonnes of medical supplies from Jordan arrived in Baghdad late on Wednesday for the first time since the conflict started, a spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian coordination office (OCHA) Elizabeth Byrs, told AFP.

However, areas around the route of the coalition forces' offensive on the Iraqi capital, including the south-central cities of Najaf, Nasiriyah and Karbala were still not being reached, according to the ICRC.

"It remains a very high priority for us to go back to towns like Najaf, Nasiriyah, Hilla, Karbala," ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari said.

"We know that there are important emergency needs in hospitals and for water and sanitation there," she added.

Notari said the security vacuum after the collapse of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime needed to be filled rapidly, and warned that looting was also affecting some aid.

"It's a de-facto occupation. As soon as there is control of certain part of the territory, as an occupation force you become responsible for the security and well-being of the population," Notari explained.

"I don't think it means they need to directly take care of all the distribution and repairs -- although it's great if they do and have the means. But there are people capable of doing that, and the occupation forces can facilitate their work," she added.

Security conditions ranged from uncertainty in Basra to chaos in parts of Baghdad, because of both pockets of fighting and looting, according to the

"The biggest problem in Basra really is that we had managed to get water supply up again to 90 percent for about 1.8 million people, and then the looters ransacked the water pipes," Notari said.

The UN said that about 720 million dollars worth of emergency supplies were heading towards Iraq by boat and by road, with some of its entering the south and north of the country.

Led by the UN Children's Fund UNICEF, UN aid agencies set foot in southern Iraq last Friday, allowing convoys carrying water to follow from Kuwait. Most of the deliveries took place around Umm Qasr, Byrs said.

The World Food Programme (WFP) resumed food deliveries from Turkey into in northern Iraq on April 4.

The UN wants to reactivate about 40,000 food distribution points set up in Iraq under the oil-for-food" programme, which ground to a halt when oil production in Iraq was stopped by the war.

Iraq's neighbours -- Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey -- had offered to open their ports and roads to supplies heading for the country, according to the head of the UN's oil-for-food programme, Benon Sevan.

About 55 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have told the UN they are ready to work in Iraq, while offers of governement aid have flowed in from several countries including the European Commission, Denmark, Germany, Egypt, Greece and the Phillipines.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that aircraft have delivered aid supplies to the Baghdad international airport.

Several NGO aid groups asked the UN Security Council on Wednesday to assure them free access to Iraqis in need of humanitarian assistance.

The aid community's concerns matched those of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi, who on Wednesday urged Washington's nominated head of a civilian administration in Iraq to intervene and ensure that stability was restored.

SPACE.WIRE