"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 site.

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

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hit back at accusations US troops were ducking their responsibility to bring order to Iraq's major cities.

"We do feel an obligation to assist in providing security and the coalition forces are doing that. They're patrolling in various cities where they see looting. They're stopping it. And they will be doing so," Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington.

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

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

Meanwhile US troops destroyed the world-famous mosaic of George Bush, the father of the current American president and the man who ordered the first US-led war against Iraq, which served as a doormat at the entrance of the landmark Rashid hotel.

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 at suspected looters.

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

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

The merchant pulled his rifle on thieves when they began sacking the shop. When US soldiers approached the area, the looters told them that the shopkeeper was a member of the ultra-loyal Saddam Fedayeen militia.

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

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.

Only a few bakeries and cafes were open in Baghdad, which has yet to regain power and water supplies that were cut during the three-week coalition 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 projectiles 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.

"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 at mosques.

The fate of Saddam himself remained a mystery, 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 in Afghanistan that Saddam and his top aides were either "dead or running like hell."

SPACE.WIRE