As thousands flee, aid workers plan to set up a refugee camp
The bomb shelter in al-Amariya, on the western edge of Baghdad, was built before the 1991 Gulf war. Now it houses families fleeing the fighting between US soldiers and mujahedeen in Fallujah, less than 50km to the west.
'Twenty-one families from our neighbourhood left,' said Miluk Abbas, a mother of three who fled on April 9, the day the fighting began. 'There is no safety. There were bombs, we couldn't get food. We were desperate. Dogs were eating dead people in the streets.'
The Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) estimates that 200,000 of Fallujah's 300,000 people have fled. Baghdad residents have borne most of the burden.
The IRC, which until last Wednesday was able to deliver medical supplies and food into Fallujah, is now awaiting permission from the American-led civilian authority to continue aid missions.
The US military has accused the IRC of delivering weapons along with aid. The IRC denies the claim, but admits the Red Crescent logo has been forged on vehicles used to deliver weapons.
The IRC has a staff of 17 Iraqi volunteers inside Fallujah trying to distribute the aid that has arrived and evacuate the injured. Meanwhile, plans have been laid to set up a camp capable of holding 200 families in a football stadium in a residential neighbourhood in Baghdad by the end of the week.