US forces began the herculean task of restoring normalcy to the country devastated by years of war and sanctions, setting up an operations center to screen Iraqi workers in the heart of the battered capital.

But near the recruitment desk in the Palestine Hotel, demonstrators lifted a banner, "Bush = Saddam."

They chanted: "There is only one God and America is the enemy of God!" and "We will sacrifice our souls and our blood for Iraq!"

One protester said the demonstration was meant "to tell the Americans that they're the ones who put Saddam in power and now they're going to try to force on us other rulers we don't want."

Only state-organized demonstrations were allowed during Saddam's 24 years of iron-fisted rule, during which he made Baghdad known as a world bastion of anti-Americanism.

But near the site of the small protest, hundreds of locals queued up for their first jobs in the post-Saddam area, triggering massive traffic jams in central Baghdad.

They flocked to a recruitment desk in the Palestine Hotel, where a marines spokeswoman said they were seeking to put Iraqis back at work in key sectors, starting with the police and electrical power departments.

"We want workers, not only senior officials," said Gunnery Sergeant Claudia Lamantia, of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force. "The idea obviously is to get everything back working."

Baghdad, a city of five million people, has been without electricity for about 10 days while most homes are also without water and telephone services. Public transportation is non-existent.

But the biggest fear among residents has been the security situation, highlighted by the pillage of entire sections of the city in recent days by rampaging youths from the immense Shiite suburb of Saddam City.

Lamantia, who was getting an earful of complaints from local citizens in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, said the marines were holding Sunday their first meetings to rebuild the police force and power utility.

"There are fears that this is not happening fast enough," she said. "We are trying to do things one thing at a time."

If more people were on the streets of Baghdad on Sunday, shops remained closed and the sprawling city appeared to teeter between a massive drive for urban renewal or another descent into potential chaos.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said several Baghdad hospitals remained without water or power.

"(We) would like to deliver medical supplies to them. But right now we don't dare because everything is being ransacked," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told AFP in Geneva.

US-led forces control most of Iraq, but pockets of resistance remain and the city of Tikrit, Saddam's fiefdom around 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, is yet to be captured. Snipers are still a major concern.

No regular Iraqi soldiers were seen in the city of 100,000, where men armed with Kalshnikov rifles and grenades told an AFP correspondent they were ready to surrender to advancing US forces, but only if Iraqi opponents of Saddam's regime -- notably Kurds and Shiites -- did not accompany them.

US military commander General Tommy Franks said "six or seven" US soldiers thought to have been taken prisoner by Iraqi forces were found by US troops and were in good shape.

The fall of Tikrit would all but mark the end of the US-led war to topple Saddam launched on March 20, which has seen every other major centre in the country of 26 million people fall into the hands of the US-led coalition.

As a reminder of the work to be done, marines exchanged heavy fire Saturday with at least two Iraqis who attacked them from the area of Saddam's presidential compound in central Baghdad.

And in a harrowing sign of what may be to come, US military officials said that marines patrolling Baghdad on Friday had discovered 310 vests fitted for use by suicide bombers.

SPACE.WIRE