Dozens of Iraqis peered through the wrought iron fence towards the former Saddam Children's Hospital, but none of them stayed very long. The stench drove them away, writes Lara Marlowe in Baghdad.
Inside the hospital grounds, civil defence workers and volunteers from the local mosque wielded shovels in the noon-day sun, exhuming bodies buried more than two weeks ago, in the last days of the US assault on Baghdad.
Most of the diggers had white paper surgeons' masks strapped across their lower faces; a few wore gas masks, of the type that were meant to protect us from Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons.
Mohamed Haitham (33), removed his gas mask to talk to me.
"We exhumed five yesterday, seven today," he explained. "The ones today were Syrian fighters, killed at Celebration Square. They will be buried in the foreigners' plot at Kharkh Cemetery."
Their names will be there, if anyone ever looks for them. There are another 12 or 13 Iraqis buried here. We'll wait until their relatives claim them before we dig them up."
Black clouds of flies vibrated around us, and Mohamed Haitham's anger exploded. "I would like to blow up this vehicle," he shouted, pointing at the US Humvee with the name "Thunder" painted on its window. "I would like to commit suicide in front of this vehicle. We dug up children and old men here."
In three weeks of war, doctors said, 200 Iraqis died in the hospital, including 30 children. It was in the last, desperate days, when there was no electricity to run refrigeration units that they dug the mass grave.
One by one, the corpses were removed from their temporary resting place and lain gently on a flat-bed lorry. Pieces of bodies were put into black plastic bags; those still intact were wrapped in white sheets.
Two grey-haired brothers, Adnan and Musa Khazal, clutched handkerchiefs to their noses as they walked from grave to grave, pulling little scraps of paper from soft-drink bottles shoved upside down into the earth. Each paper recorded the place and date where the body was found, and when possible, its identity.
"We are looking for our brother Alaa-eddin," Adnan said.
"He was 42, an engineer. The tanks fired on his car in Celebration Square in Mansour on 6th or 7th April. We found his car, but not him. We want to bury him in the family plot, in Ghazali Cemetery."
For 15 days the Khazal brothers have searched through lists of dead and wounded in all of Baghdad's main hospitals, mosques and Husseiniyas (prayer rooms). "We even looked at the al-Rashid and Zafaraniya military hospitals," Adnan continued. "His widow is very upset; she has four children, aged 2 to 12, and she doesn't believe her husband is dead."
Pte Thomas Spencer (25), of the American 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, manned a heavy machine- gun on the roof of the Humvee.
Did he realise how upset the Iraqis were, exhuming their war dead? "I dunno. I guess some people are happy and some people are sad," Pte Spencer shrugged. "We're just trying to help them. But the smell bothers me."