The Iraqi capital's 32 hospitals were in a state of collapse, and water and electricity were cut off in many cities while the wounded and the sick across much of southern and central Iraq were with without international aid, agencies warned.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued an urgent appeal to the United States and Britain to meet their obligation to protect hospitals and water supplies after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The ICRC urgently appeals to the coalition forces and all other persons in authority to do everything possible to protect essential infrastructure, such as hospitals and water supply and evacuation systems, from looting and destruction," the Geneva-based organization said in a statement.

ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger indicated that he had gone public with the appeal following "high level" contacts with coalition forces on Wednesday.

Ministers from several governments, including Britain and Germany, joined the calls.

"There must be a much bigger effort to stop this looting and violence," Britain's international development secretary Clare Short told BBC radio.

The ICRC said its aid workers were in extreme danger when they were able to move in the Iraqi capital.

Major hospitals there had been stripped and destroyed to the extent that the war wounded could not stay, according to Balthasar Staehelin, the ICRC's chief delegate for the Middle East.

"We're talking about a town of some five million inhabitants, where hospitals are basically not functioning any longer, where medical staff cannot work, there are hygiene problems, summer temperatures, bodies unattended to," he insisted.

The UN refugee agency warned that the collapse of law and order in Iraq could still lead to a refugee exodus from the country, after 30,000 people fled the cities of Baghdad and Nasiriyah earlier this week.

The group of refugees arrived at the border town of Badrah near Iran, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

UNHCR had not reported any major refugee movements out of Iraq since the US-led invasion began.

"We're not out of the woods yet," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.

"The current chaotic situation can still lead to displacement if order is not restored and maintained, and we remain particularly concerned about continued movements," he told a news briefing.

Other UN agencies, which started stocking emergency supplies and building up staff in neighbouring countries before the US-led invasion began, said they were still holding back a massive aid operation inside Iraq.

A truck sent to Nasiriyah by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) was forced back on Thursday because of unrest.

"We are making security assessments and, as soon as the security conditions permit, we will re-enter massively Iraq," said Elizabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian coordinator.

But the UN's mass return was unlikely to happen before next week. A security probe in the south was not expected until Monday or Tuesday, according to UNICEF.

"We're pretty optimistic for the situation in northern Iraq, we're not so optimistic for the whole situation in southern Iraq," UNICEF spokesman Damien Personnaz said.

In the south, UNICEF said water shortages were having an "alarming" impact on children in two southern provinces.

The number of diarrhoea cases among under five-year-olds increased sharply in the past five days and the risk of malnutrition among children was growing.

Many people appeared to be returning to their homes in northern Iraq as fighting subsided there, aid workers said.

The UN estimated that there were 135,000 displaced Iraqis there, compared to about 280,000 last week.

SPACE.WIRE