"We want the law to rule and if the Americans don't defend us then we'll defend ourselves with our own weapons," said store owner Khazen Hussein.

Twenty-five people, including two children, were admitted to Baghdad's Al-Kindi hospital for gunshot wounds after merchants took up arms against thieves for the first time since US troops entered the city to fanfare Wednesday.

But the hospital, Baghdad's largest, could provide little help as it has been ransacked itself.

"The situation is chaotic and catastrophic," Peter Tarabula, medical coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross here, said after an ICRC team inspected the hospital.

All staff have fled Al-Kindi hospital with the exception of two doctors who administer first-aid but do not carry out operations.

Iraq's largest archaeological museum and Baghdad's two plushest hotels also fell prey to roving bands of thieves as anarchy took hold in the power vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam Hussein's 24-year regime.

Flames engulfed the Rashid and the Mansur hotels after bandits made off with furniture, carpets and television sets.

US troops say they are still involved in a military campaign and do not have the capacity to maintain law and order.

In Al-Rasafi market, merchants fired pistols in the air outside a seven-storey garment store, while at Al-Arabi market shopkeepers fired Kalashnikov assault rifles toward approaching looters.

Young people were also seen with iron bars running after potential thieves.

Almost everything has been considered fair game, from the luxury homes of senior Iraqi officials to European diplomatic missions and former state institutions that once inspired fear.

US soldiers shot and killed a Baghdad merchant who was defending his shop with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against looters, neighbors told an AFP photographer.

The merchant pulled his rifle on the thieves when they began sacking the shop. When US soldiers approached the area, the looters told them that the shopkeeper was a member of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary force.

The American troops opened fire with heavy machine guns, killing the man, the neighbors said.

Only a few bakeries and cafes were open Friday in Baghdad, which still lacks running water and electricity that was cut during the three-week bombing campaign.

With no police force or fire department, a number of government buildings -- including the Iraqi Industrial Union, the Civil Administration Department and the Trade Ministry -- were still smouldering after being torched by mobs.

No new attacks were reported Friday against US forces, who have met only sporadic resistance from pro-Saddam fighters since they swept into central Baghdad.

But US troops were visibly nervous, rarely moving from their positions, after a suicide bombing late Thursday that killed one soldier in north Baghdad.

Meanwhile in another district in the north of the capital, around 30 fully armed Iraqi missiles were found in a vacant lot near a shopping center.

Each of the sandy-yellow missiles was 10 meters (32 feet) long and a meter in diameter and carried inscriptions in a Cyrillic alphabet on its fuselage, an AFP correspondent said.

They had been loaded on 15 trailers which witnesses said were abandoned at the site several days ago by men in civilian clothes.

Looters who were busy on the edges of the lot, which was surrounded by houses under construction, stayed well away, shouting to journalists: "Boom, boom. Kamikazes!"

At the Ramadan 14 mosque in the heart of Baghdad, near where a towering statue of Baghdad was demolished by residents and US troops Wednesday, only about 20 people showed up for weekly prayers, compared with thousands on an average Friday.

The few worshipers blamed the low attendance on US checkpoints around the central square and people's fear their homes would be burgled if they left.

"After seeing all the looting, encouraged by the Americans, I'm beginning to like Saddam Hussein," said businessman Fayez Khalil, in an opinion shared by most others who turned up for prayers.

Just a week ago, clerics used Friday sermons to exhort followers to wage holy war against the US and British "invasion."

But the cleric did not show up Friday at the Ramadan 14 mosque. His son said he had suffered "a cerebral embolism due to the situation."

The fate of Saddam himself remained as much a mystery as ever, with still no evidence as to whether he was killed in a massive bombing on Monday that targeted him and his two sons.

Top US military commander Tommy Franks said Friday in Afghanistan that Saddam and his top aides were either "dead or running like hell."

A tip that Saddam was hiding in a Baghdad mosque led Thursday to a fierce firefight between marines and Saddam loyalists that killed one American soldier and five civilians.

SPACE.WIRE