And as night fell machine-gun fire and mortar shells could be heard in the surrounding areas, suggesting that US/UK troops still have not “secured” the deep port as the Western media has reported.

The only food and rations getting to the people are coming to Safwan, some 17 kilometers away from the port on the Kuwait-Iraq border. They are being delivered by the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society.

When the trucks arrived in Safwan yesterday afternoon, over 350 men, women and children immediately descended on them, fighting and crawling over one another in search of food.

A chant started among the group that rose over the sound of the trucks and the passing armored convoy. The chant was: “With our blood and our souls we will fight and die for you, Saddam.” But one student said in broken English as he made the thumbs-up sign. “We need water. America good, British good,” he told Arab News.

Small fights broke out between different groups fighting for the rations, and a number of people suffered minor injuries.

Scores of hungry Iraqis in this bleak border town scrambled onto the backs of three trucks and started throwing out boxes of food and water, many of which split open on the ground or landed in pools of rainwater.

Officials from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society admitted they had been overwhelmed by the response. Some 21,000 meals were packed into the convoy including bread, flour, tea, water and oil.

Armed US troops were on hand to oversee the delivery of supplies.

Red Crescent official Hani Al-Jazzaf told reporters: “I said, ‘please, brothers, sisters, we will bring you more food tomorrow.’ But they are afraid we won’t come back.”

Nabil Ali Hussein, a father of six, told Arab News that his family was desperately in need of food. “We are very hungry. I wanted two boxes but only one box good,” he said in English as he sat proudly on his white box taped with the Red Crescent logo.

An American soldier who stood at some distance from the trucks looked on in despair at the scenes of chaos. But US Staff Sergeant Johnny Monds later told reporters that the show of support for Saddam was in contrast to the reception which US and British soldiers who invaded Iraq last week to overthrow the Iraqi leader had been given over the last couple of days here.

Simon Miller of Britain’s Royal Military Police said some locals had managed to grab up to half a dozen boxes. “We were asked to help with the security. We started by trying to push them away and realized that that was pointless,” Miller said.

“There were just too many of them, they are very eager, and they are not very supportive of us,” he said in reference to the pro-Saddam chants.

“People are stockpiling. Is that fair? I noticed that some of the families, the weaker ones, the women, were being pushed aside,” Miller said.

The end result seemed to be that, despite the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society’s best efforts, there were still hundreds of families in Safwan without food or water. The situation is the same in Umm Qasr, but there are no rations being delivered there.

The road from Safwan to Umm Qasr is littered with abandoned and burned out vehicles. At the military check point five kilometers outside Umm Qasr, a soldier with the Australian forces expressed doubt that our convoy of journalists would be allowed into Umm Qasr as there were 20,000 Iraqi prisoners of war being held there, according to him. At the edge of Umm Qasr is a wall with a triple sized poster of Saddam Hussein. On one poster, someone — presumably an American soldier — had spray painted: “Los Angeles Raiders”. Umm Qasr is a small community. The main sources of livelihood for the people here are the port itself and a cement factory. Both are now closed. Iraqi children, some as young as three, were running about asking the arriving journalists for any rations that could be spared.

All the stores in Umm Qasr have been looted or shuttered. After looting and storing the supplies at their homes, locals then prepare to sell them at inflated prices on a growing black market. A packet of cigarettes is currently being sold for 3,500 Iraqi dinars.

When asked whether they favored a regime change planned, the people, mostly Shiites, said they were in favor of the removal of Saddam and the introduction of a new government — but they expected help from the coalition forces after Umm Qasr fell.

“If what the US forces are doing here is any indication of the times to come, then we would rather have Saddam,” one of them told Arab News.

As night fell on Umm Qasr, sporadic machine-gun fire could be heard in the distance. Bright flashes of exploding munitions could also be seen. Twice in the space of an hour flares were launched, suddenly bathing the town in a blanket of light.