Lara Marlowe, in Iraq's capital, describes the war from the viewpoint of the International Red Cross
The family of a young girl who was shot in the head on Wednesday brought her to the gate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where she died before she could be cared for.
The ICRC's Baghdad office is only a block away from the Ibn Nafis Hospital, but the wounded girl's family had so little confidence in Iraq's war-devastated medical system that they thought she'd have a better chance with the ICRC.
The tragedy shows two things about post-Saddam Baghdad: that civilians are still wounded or killed daily, usually in gunfights between looters and civilians trying to defend their property; and that more than a week after the arrival of US forces, only half of the capital's 36 hospitals are functioning.
In the last days of the battle for Baghdad, the fighting was so intense that at least three hospitals - Iskan, Yarmook and Kindi - buried the dead in hospital gardens.
Yarmook was turned into a military hospital on April 4th, as wounded from fighting at the airport were admitted at a rate of 100 an hour. But even as a military hospital, it still had the right to protection under the Geneva Convention. Ten days ago, on the eve of the US forces' advance into Baghdad, the Americans bombarded the Yarmook Hospital so fiercely with tank shells that the entire third floor was destroyed.
"Doctors had to break a hole in a wall to save themselves from the shrapnel and bullets," Mr Roland Huguenin, spokesman for the ICRC in Baghdad said. "They saw true horror. On the day US troops entered the city, doctors at Yarmook filled two mass graves outside the hospital; one with 17 bodies, the other with six."
Despite what they'd been through, and the looting of half their supplies, the doctors at Yarmook wanted to resume work. "From the first day, we told the Americans: 'Protect the hospitals,' " Mr Huguenin said.
Yarmook Hospital reopened on April 15th, under the protection of US forces. "Better late than never," Mr Huguenin added.
Three of Baghdad's surviving hospitals have been taken over by "Najafis" - theology students from the Shia holy city who advocate Islamic revolution, like their mentor, Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr.
The Kindi Hospital was so thoroughly looted when the regime collapsed that the Najafis can do little with it. The Sadr (former Qadissiyah) and Chawadir Hospitals in the north Baghdad Shia slums are still full of casualties, many of them wounded in fights over loot.
"They're not doctors," Mr Huguenin said of the Najafis. "I'm not sure they know how to run a hospital."
The number of civilian casualties is one of many unresolved questions of this war. Using the ICRC's estimates - 100 wounded every day of the bombardment until April 3rd; 100 wounded every hour overnight in the battle for Baghdad airport; followed by several hundred wounded every day until April 9th - one arrives at a figure of at least 4,200 wounded in Baghdad alone, though many wounded were Iraqi military from April 4th on.
There are no estimates available for the number of dead, or for the rest of the country, Mr Huguenin said. "The Iraqis always tried to hide their dead - not to demoralise the population. The Americans accused them of exaggerating civilian casualties, when the contrary was true."
Mr Huguenin said the "imbedded" journalists who travelled with US and British forces saw very little of what happened to civilians "and they were inclined to do reporting favourable to the troops."
He believes the question of civilian casualties will be a crucial part of the post-war debate about how the war was covered by journalists. He was "scandalised" when BBC Television News led its broadcast with the release of a US servicewoman in Nassirya, as details of the massacre of between 60 and 70 civilians at Hillah emerged on April 1st. Most are believed to have been killed by cluster bombs, which are banned for use against civilians.
"In live interviews with the BBC, I kept bringing up the dead civilians in Hillah, and they cut me off every time, asking what the ICRC was doing about water supplies."
Although the ICRC made an urgent appeal to the US and Britain on April 11th to halt pillage, restore order and repair damaged or destroyed civilian facilities, they have been slow to do so.
"It's surprising that they did not foresee the looting and disorder, when everyone else did," Mr Huguenin said. "The problem is that Marines are fighters - they have no experience at policing or running a civil administration, and the Americans have left that gap open."
The ICRC - not the US - restored water supplies to much of Baghdad on Wednesday, by repairing the Qanat and Saba Nissan pumping stations. The ICRC also brought US technicians together with the Iraqi electricity board in the hope of restoring power by today.
One of the ICRC's initiatives had to be abandoned after three days. The humanitarian group had a satellite telephone reserved for Iraqis to telephone relatives abroad. But people grew impatient queuing for hours in the hot weather, and the well-intentioned gesture ended in screaming matches and fist fights.