US-led forces are providing security against looting in Iraqi cities and are working to prevent further lawlessness, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, insisted repeatedly yesterday.
"We do feel an obligation to assist in providing security, and the coalition forces are doing that. They're patrolling in various cities where they see looting. They're stopping it," he said.
In the longer term, Mr Rumsfeld stressed the necessity to hand over responsibility for security to local people.
"The second step, of course, is not to do that on a permanent basis, but rather to find Iraqis who can assist in providing police support in those cities. We're in the process of doing this," he said.
The looting was an unfortunate but temporary consequence of a people emerging from the repression of a dictatorial regime, he added.
"While no one condones looting, on the other hand one can understand the pent-up feeling that may result from decades of repression," he said.
Mr Rumsfeld strongly denied that Iraq was falling into chaos, saying that television images of isolated acts of looting and violence were being played "over and over again" for sensational effect.
In Baghdad, gunmen apparently from the Shia Muslim community in the eastern slums battled paramilitaries loyal to President Saddam overnight, US military sources said.
Throughout the day armed men and youths roamed the streets, robbing buildings and hijacking cars.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on US-led forces in Iraq to protect hospitals and water supplies from looters.
The committee said it was "profoundly alarmed by the chaos currently prevailing" in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.
It noted that coalition forces had "specific responsibilities as occupying powers", including "taking all measures in their power to restore and maintain, as far as possible, public order".
An ICRC spokesman, Mr Balthasar Staehelin, described a "dramatic" situation inside Baghdad.
It included the "virtual collapse" of the health system, with the 32 hospitals stripped, left without water or electricity, while doctors and nurses could not reach patients because it was too dangerous.
"The medical system cannot cope today, and the surgical capacity certainly not," he said.
US forces appealed yesterday to members of the city's police, fire and ambulance services to return to work and began seeking engineers and managers to help restore water, sewerage and electricity.
President George W. Bush urged Syrian leaders yesterday to do everything they could to close Syria's borders to fleeing followers of Mr Saddam Hussein and turn over any already on its territory.
"We expect full co-operation" from Damascus, he told reporters shortly after meeting for the first time at two area military hospitals US soldiers wounded in Iraq. - (Reuters, Guardian Service)