US urges Iraq aid groups to stay

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has urged foreign aid agencies not to quit Baghdad in the wake of the bomb attack on the city's International Red Cross HQ.

Speaking after yesterday's car bombs which killed 34 and injured more than 220 others, Mr Powell said the departure of civilian organisations would hand victory to the terrorists.

"Their work is needed. And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win," he said.

This morning the mood remained tense as the Iraqi capital remained on high alert for further strikes. Police stations, US army bases, and buildings housing international organisations had even heavier armed presences than normal.

A nervous guard outside a United Nations World Food Programme building said: "I am telling drivers that if they do anything I don't like, I will empty this gun into their car."

The co-ordinated attacks, which targeted the Red Cross's central Baghdad HQ and four police stations in an hour-long orgy of violence at morning rush hour, prompted the clearest admissions yet from US forces that foreign fighters are now waging war against them.

Previously they had stuck largely to the line that the attacks were mainly the work of disgruntled ex-Ba'ath Party loyalists. But the scale of the attacks and the arrest of a man carrying a Syrian passport as he tried to detonate a fifth car bomb, suggested foreign involvement.

Some intelligence experts believe there is now incontrovertible evidence that foreign terrorist organisations - including al Qaeda - are operating in the country, possibly with the covert backing of neighbouring states.

The International Red Cross has made no decision on whether to scale down or end its operations in Iraq.

However, the Paris-based charity Doctors Without Borders said it will reduce its expatriate team of seven in Baghdad, and the German government is considering withdrawing four water-supply experts.

Many UN workers and aid agencies pulled out following August's car bomb at the UN HQ which killed 23.