"Our most pressing needs? Fuel and security," said Tara Barki, the hospital's ophthalmologist. "We could do with some luck too," she quipped.

"At the moment, we are operating with less than 25 percent of our staff," said Barki, a graduate of Baghdad University.

But she hoped 60 percent of the personnel would show up on Tuesday "if they find a way of commuting".

Emergency services have been functioning as best they can over the past few days, treating many civilian victims of US bombing, but also casualties from car crashes, such as the four victims of a road accident brought in by a truck Monday morning.

Rooms are empty, patients having chosen to go home.

"They did not want to stay here, even when we told them they would be better off in hospital," said Mohammad Maazen, a 25-year-old male nurse.

He has not left the hospital since April 4, staying through the US assault on the Iraqi capital.

Maazen said he did this with his family in mind.

"If one of them is sick, I would want him or her to find medical help," he said.

Emergency, an Italian humanitarian organization which specializes in providing medical assistance in war zones, is working on bringing three fuel tankers from the northern Kurdish-held city of Sulaymaniya.

"We hope they will reach here today," said Carlo Guce, who handles logistics and describes conditions in the hospital as "disastrous."

But Mohammad Fulaih, the hospital's assistant pharmacist, has lived too long with the shortages caused by the UN embargo imposed on Iraq since 1990 to give up.

"It's been a while I haven't had so much medicine," he said, explaining that although the hospital had not fallen prey to looters, it had received boxes of medicines stolen from other hospitals.

Many medical establishments in Baghdad were hit by the orgy of plundering which engulfed the Iraqi capital after government forces vanished and US troops ended Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule on Wednesday.

Mosque preachers have since urged people who looted hospitals to return their booty - hence the boxes of medicines piled up at the entrance of Fulaih's pharmacy.

"It's a long list," said Fulaih when asked about his most pressing needs. "We're short of everything, including medicines and medical equipment," he said.

According to Dr Barki, al-Kindi escaped the looters thanks to volunteers who turned up five days ago to protect the hospital. "They did a very good job," she said.

Humanitarian organizations earlier said al-Kindi had been ransacked. Frederic Bonamy, head of the French relief group Premiere Urgence, told AFP the hospital succeeded in reopening only after local residents banded together to ensure its safety.

Haydar Daoud Salman, a 30-year-old television repairman who is part of the group protecting the facility, told AFP the arrangement had been agreed with an American officer.

"We had the okay of the Americans, who told us they were unable to protect the hospital," Salman said rather nervously.

But the US officer made his agreement conditional on the group limiting themselves to three Kalashnikov assault rifles, not taking their weapons out of the hospital compound and wearing surgeons' gowns.

Salman said it had been his own idea to come here, while his comrade Jaafar Kabi, a 34-year-old student of religion in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, said he had been instructed to come by his spiritual leaders.

Only once, last Friday, did the men have to open fire to drive away four suspicious people attempting to enter the compound, Salman said.

Such vigilantes sprang up in Baghdad after the looting began to protect shops and neighborhoods at a time when local police had disappeared and US soldiers failed to intervene.

Other establishments, such as the towering Saddam Medical City -- which is sure to be renamed soon -- are now protected by US troops who, with Abrams tanks stationed nearby, carry out body searches to screen those entering the place.

Iraqi police cars escorted by US forces organized joint patrols of Baghdad's streets Monday for the first time since the city came under American control.

SPACE.WIRE