BAGHDAD, 11 April 2003 - It was the day of the looters. They trashed the German Embassy and threw the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag - flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section - as a mob of middle-aged men, chadored women and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian Embassy was broken into a few hours later.

At the headquarters of UNICEF, which has been trying to save and improve the lives of millions of Iraqi children since the 1980s, an army of thieves stormed the building, throwing brand new photocopiers on top of each other and sending cascades of UN files on child diseases, pregnancy death rates and nutrition across the floors.

The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad after the most stage-managed photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima, but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea of what liberation means. It also represented a serious breach of the Geneva Conventions. As the occupying power, the United States is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control, but yesterday their troops were driving past the German Embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate.