Yesterday's strike took out two homes of an extended family of about a dozen. Tuesday's raid destroyed the local school, and on Monday a poor baklava seller, pitied by the entire neighborhood, lost his wife, mother, sister, nephew, and two sons to American missiles.

Here in Sueb, 22 miles from the center of Baghdad and just beyond the ring of burning crude oil that marks the outer reaches of the Iraqi capital, where urban sprawl ends and desert begins, a battle that has gone largely unseen has been raging for days.

An injured Iraqi child lies on the floor of al-Hilla hospital due to a lack of beds in Hilla in the southern province of Babylon.(AFP/Karim Sahib)

Yesterday, American troops were within 30 miles of the city, only days away from the bloodiest fighting - and ultimate prize - of this conflict.

But while the outcome of the war will be decided with the capture of the obscene palaces of Saddam Hussein along the banks of the Tigris in the heart of the city, the American forces must first conquer the periphery.

Sueb and the other suburbs that appeared as population growth outstripped available land in Baghdad lie directly on the Americans' path as they draw nearer to the columns of thick, oily smoke that mark the capital's outer defenses.

After the US troops suffered setbacks in the south of Iraq in the early days of the war, the people on the next frontline are ruing their fate.

The last five days have seen intense, round-the-clock bombardments, forcing locals to flee to makeshift underground shelters, or to relatives elsewhere in the city.

"We are beginning to believe that the Americans want to take revenge on us for what happened before," said Fareed Fathi. Like many in Sueb, he is a "free worker" - or unemployed. "All of the people are very afraid," he says.

And so this easily forgotten neighborhood, part village, part spillover suburb, a dumping ground for Shias too poor to afford homes in Baghdad proper, finds itself in an unwanted - and lethal - position of strategic importance.

"There are bombings - missiles and airplanes - all day long, and all night," said Walid Hathem, whose home was replaced by a giant crater a few hours before dawn yesterday. "It's continuous."

High above, a vapor trail from a US jet arced across the sky, and the ground shook from a nearby incoming missile.

While in central Baghdad the war has arrived as a series of interruptions to daily life, Sueb and the other extremities of this vast city are being softened up for America's assault. Here, as in other outlying areas of Baghdad, civilians are also paying the price for living close to enticing targets.

On the far side of the village portion of Sueb, Saddam Hussein's farmhouse emerges from a grove of palm trees, and a radar installation marks the start of the military zone of Radwaniyah, a few miles down the road.

As each day brings more people out into the streets of central Baghdad, the people on the outskirts of Sueb have spent their nights in tiny burrows in the mud - rudimentary bunkers reinforced with steel drums and scavenged wooden beams.

None of the shelters is large enough to stand in - nor sleep in. "There are 10 or 15 of us there every night," said Suad Abdur Rahman, a cousin and neighbor."There is no room to lie down, no room to breathe. "We crouch one on top of another, with one child on each knee."

Despite such precautions, in Sueb as in other outlying areas, America's bombardments have brought almost daily casualties.

On March 26, an explosion killed nearly 20 Iraqis on the main road of Shaab, on the northern perimeter of Baghdad. Two days later, more than 50 people were killed when a US missile struck a crowded marketplace in the Shouala neighborhood, a hurriedly built suburb for working class Shias not unlike Sueb.

A wounded girl, seen in this image from video, looks at her injured leg from a bed at Al Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 3, 2003. The girl said about the injury, I was looking at my brother and all of a sudden a rocket dropped on the building and bricks fell from the building onto my leg. (AP Photo/APTN)

On Monday, tragedy struck in Sueb when US missiles killed six members of the family of the lowly baklava seller, Ali Abdul Rasul, and five others living in the same road. Twelve houses were destroyed in the blast, hastily built one storey structures crumpled into the earth.

"The people living in this area are the very poorest people. It really is so cruel that we are being hit," said Italia Ali Mohammed, whose house, down the road from Mr Rasul's, was strewn with shattered glass.

In these neighborhoods, shared circumstance and geography - the houses are practically on top of each other - magnify the impact of America's bombs. In Sueb's case, they have been bound even tighter over the generations by ties of blood and marriage.

At 4am yesterday, after the children had cried themselves to sleep, the missiles destroyed two homes, leaving Mr Hathem with few possessions beyond a kerosene cooker and a television set. The entire clan felt the loss. They also witnessed it.

"When the missiles came in, everything shook," said Yas Khudayar, who shared a tunnel space of barely 2 square meters with a wife and five children. "We expected to be dead any minute."

Next door, at Ms Rahman's house, the floors were carpeted with broken glass and chunks of plaster. Overhead fans were plucked from the ceilings like flowers.

"Just look at what those Americans have done," she said. "We hate them now more than ever. What have we done? Why should our children suffer? Saddam Hussein has not hurt us. He hasn't been a nuisance to us."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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