WAR ON IRAK

Straitstimes: Going home

AS BAGHDAD crumbles under the weight of massive US-led air strikes and its residents flee for their lives, something odd is taking place hundreds of kilometres away in the capital of Jordan.

Iraqis who are already out of harm's way in Amman are returning home to be with their families and to fight the Americans.

Since the war broke out on Thursday, a stream of Iraqis in battered cars and creaky buses have been making the 700-km journey across the open desert to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

One of them is 25-year-old taxi driver Ahmed Qessy.

He said that on Wednesday, he pulled out the body of his Jordanian friend from under the rubble of a building in a town near Baghdad.

The friend was a taxi driver who was plying the lucrative route between Amman and Baghdad.

Mr Qessy buried his friend on Thursday and left a day later for Iraq with three other Iraqis in his yellow Samsung car.

Interviewed at the border crossing, he attacked the United States and Britain for killing his friend.

''I don't need chemical weapons,'' he said, seething with rage.

''I will kill the Americans with my hands. George Bush is killing innocent people and telling lies to the world.''