The trickle expected to become a flood

By JUSTIN HUGGLER in Ruwaished

One of the massive barrage of cruise missiles that set the sky over Baghdad burning in the Pentagon's "shock and awe" campaign landed a few hundred metres from Farah Gedi's home.

That was when he decided to leave Baghdad - a long, dangerous journey up the desert highway to Jordan, with the threat of the bombs over him all the way.

Gedi is one of just over 500 refugees who have made it out of Iraq to Jordan so far. But many more are expected to turn up, looking for shelter.

All but two of those who have come so far have been foreign guest workers, but they have come with stories of life under the bombs.

During that terrible bombardment, Gedi says, he and the others who lived in his apartment building huddled on the ground floor, hoping that somehow they would be safer.

Yet by day, he said, life returned almost to normal. "There were people in the streets, the market was open."

Gedi is a Somali, no stranger to war or to American soldiers - he has seen both in his homeland.

But that massive wave of bombing in Baghdad was too much for him. "We only have one life," he shrugs.

The refugees have come not only from Baghdad. Some have brought stories of the bombing on other cities.

Ahmad Jama' Ali was asleep when the first bombs fell on Mosul. "It was so heavy," he said. "The entire house was shaking. The glass fell out of all the windows."

Another Somali, Ali was in Mogadishu when American soldiers fought General Aideed's forces there.

"I am used to the sound of anti-aircraft fire, and guns. But the sound of a cruise missile was something new to me."

Ali said Iraqis had been issued with six months supplies of food and fuel to last through a war far longer than anyone in the West thinks this can last.

He said he fled Baghdad first to the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which was not being bombed.

But the only place he and his friends could find to stay was close to the Ministry of Defence building, a likely target of air strikes. So they decided it would be better to head on to Jordan through the desert.

People arriving on that highway yesterday spoke of the taxi driver's hands sweating so much with fear that he had to hold them out the window to dry them.

Some of the refugees said they had seen buildings on fire, and Iraqi military areas being bombed.

British and American special forces are in the desert fighting the Iraqi soldiers for control of the area, which was used to launch Scud missiles at Israel in 1991.

Usually the road is ploughed by Jordanian and Iraqi taxi drivers ferrying people in and out of Baghdad. But one Jordanian taxi driver has already died on the highway, when he stopped to make a phone call and the building was hit by a bomb.

Yet cars were still heading for the border towards Baghdad yesterday, Iraqi oil trucks trying to go home after dropping off oil at the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Mugahid Musa, an Egyptian who lived in Iraq for 20 years, told how he fled after cruise missiles ploughed into Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit on Saturday.

Only a few cruise missiles struck, he said, but more than 200 people were injured by shrapnel.

Yet he insisted the Iraqi people there were defiant.

"If the British and American soldiers enter Tikrit, they will never come out again."

Many of the refugees voiced similar sentiments - the anger which has been boiling all around the Arab world was evident here, too.

And many of the refugees said they believed the Iraqi people they had lived with would fight against the invading soldiers rather than welcome them as liberators.

"The Iraqi people respect their leadership, not because it is good or bad," claimed Gedi, "but because he is resisting the Americans."

The transit camp for these foreigners fleeing Iraq is busy, but the larger camp for Iraqi refugees up the road is still empty.

Only two Iraqis have made it out, say aid workers, and they had friends to stay with in Amman.

Some of the refugees said they thought Iraqis were not being allowed out by the regime, but that they had seen several on the roads, heading out of Baghdad and the major cities for desert towns they believe will be safer.

It is just as well they have not arrived yet - the camp has not been finished. Meanwhile at the foreigners' transit camp, many, like Ali, say they cannot go home because there is another war in their home country.

The official in charge of the camp, Ahmad al-Hadid, shrugs: "It's not my problem. They are here for 72 hours then they are supposed to move on," he says. But it appears a few of those who cannot are being quietly allowed to stay on.

Ali says: "If they tell me I have to go to Somalia, I will go back to Iraq instead."

Refugee exodus

* The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is braced for a possible 600,000 Iraqi refugees fleeing the US-led attacks.

* Sites have been prepared in northern Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Iran.

* Relief items have been stockpiled in several centres.

- INDEPENDENT