The protest by about 100 Iraqis came as US forces began the herculean task of restoring the battered country to normalcy, launching a recruitment drive to put Iraqis back to work in key sectors.

If the size of the crowd was small, it reflected mounting impatience here with the US failure to stem widespread looting and re-establish order and basic services since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell Wednesday.

Brandishing a huge banner that read "Bush=Saddam," the demonstrators gathered in front of the Palestine Hotel to criticise US President George W. Bush for failing to fulfill his promise of a better Iraq.

"United States, you will regret it if you don't keep this promise," they chanted. "We will sacrifice our souls and our blood for Iraq!"

Baghdad was known as a bastion of state-organized anti-Americanism during Saddam's 24-year rule but Sunday's was tinged more with disappointment than ideological fervor.

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."

But near the site of the 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 marine 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.

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."

More people were on the streets of Baghdad on Sunday and bus services were resuming between the Iraqi capital and cities in the south.

But 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, snipers were still a concern and the city of Tikrit, Saddam's fiefdom around 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, was yet to be captured.

No regular Iraqi soldiers were seen in the city of 100,000, where men armed with Kalashnikov 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.

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