Mood in Baghdad: The Baghdad authorities took journalists to see a bomb-damaged university yesterday and hear the predictable chanting of support for Saddam Hussein. Lara Marlowe reports
Each day, Baghdad looks more like the battered Kuwaiti capital that Iraqi troops fled 12 years ago this month.
Since the Iraqis lit a ring of oil fires around the city in the hope of confusing the guidance systems of US bombs and missiles, the sky has filled with carcinogenic dark grey smoke, and the temperature has dropped several degrees.
Residents are coughing and wheezing. The atmosphere is oppressive, even when the bombardments stop for a few hours.
You don't have to look far to see broken windows and gutted buildings; the result of more than 1,000 missiles and bombs unleashed upon the city since last Thursday morning.
Because the worst bombardments start after sunset, the streets empty in late afternoon. In the early hours of yesterday morning, there was a fierce gun battle in the streets around my hotel.
No one seemed to know what it was, but there was speculation it might have been looters from the slums of Saddam City, repelled by police or the Baath Party militia.
Several busloads of young men in black leather jackets have also been sighted arriving in Baghdad - reinforcements for the militia?
The Ministry of Information took foreign journalists to al-Mustansiriyah University yesterday, to see damage from the previous afternoon's bombardment.
An explosion on the campus lawn left a gaping crater and broke a water main, which gurgled muddy liquid into Palestine Boulevard, even as a maintenance crew with a digger tried to repair it.
The detonation scattered chunks of asphalt, glass and dirt for hundreds of metres around. The nearest building, whose blue and white enamel sign clearly marked it in Arabic and English as the Students' Club, was badly damaged.
A young man in a green militia uniform identified himself as Ali Adnan, physics student, age 27.
"All the students in the university who have military training wear this uniform," he said. But surely that did not justify bombing the campus? Mr Adnan claimed there were about two dozen students wounded. One of them probably died, he added.
Inside the Students' Club, there were stacks of plastic chairs, empty glass display cases, crates of soft drinks and giant casserole dishes in the kitchen.
Pieces of bomb shrapnel lay among the clods of dirt and asphalt; they'd even reached the bleachers and basketball courts on the far side of the building, as if a tornado had swept through the campus.
As we returned to the bus, the obligatory rally in homage to President Saddam Hussein started.
A toothless peasant woman in a black veil screeched in front of the television cameras, then began to sway and wave her hands in a chant of loyalty to the raïs. The crowd followed her cue; everyone was clapping.
The performance was not spontaneous, not happy, there between the gushing water main and the devastated campus.
But they had it down to a "T"; every syllable of adoration for the dictator as much a part of their lives as the shabby shops on Palestine Boulevard and the ominous black clouds above us.