ICRC staff have been working since Sunday to repair damage at the Qanat pumping station in the north of the capital, Roland Huguenin-Benjamin said.

The station supplies the huge, impoverished Shiite Muslim quarter called Saddam City, home to some two million people.

Residents have renamed the northeastern district Al-Sadr City.

The ICRC official added that efforts were also underway to mend the water works at Saba Nissan which feeds the Rasafa district, also on the eastern bank of the Tigris which runs through the heart of Baghdad.

Water supplies dried up gradually in the city of five million as US forces stepped up their assault on Baghdad, which fell last Wednesday.

Power outages in Baghdad and its surburbs since April 4 were also preventing the distribution of water, added Huguenin-Benjamin.

"Our engineers worked for 12 years to get these pumping stations working. They know them like the back of their hand," the ICRC official said.

Before the 1991 Gulf War and the international embargo slapped on Iraq for invading Kuwait, the installations were very modern, he said.

The Americans expect to send experts as quickly as possible to work on the electricity grid. "They well know it is a matter of urgency, that they must do something to show change," Huguenin-Benjamin said.

Morale at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which also tackles water problems as part of its remit, was at its lowest ebb since locals ransacked its Baghdad offices last Wednesday and Thursday.

A specialist team that worked on water and public health has been reduced to three people from eight after expatriate staff left the country two days before the war was launched to oust Saddam Hussein's regime, according to UNICEF official Hatim George Hatim.

"We repair or we ensure the maintenance of generators that we have installed in pumping or treatment stations," said Hatim, an Iraqi national.

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