She coped with her terror of the bombs, drive-by shootings and kidnappings by deciding, at the start of this year, to venture no further than her garden gate.

But the final straw for the 42-year-old housewife from the middle-class New Baghdad district in the Iraqi capital came when a rebel attack on a water plant cut off supplies to two million people.

With the temperature above 50C, this brought Mrs Ali "the true knowledge of despair".

"I didn't think it could get worse - and then it did," she said, her kitchen filled with dirty plates and the lavatories unflushed. "The children are crying. All we want is to pour some water on our bodies.

"I now wish we could go back to Saddam's time. We suffered then, but not like the suffering nowadays. There is no water or electricity. I can't sleep because of the heat. How are we to live these lives of misery?"

At a conference in Brussels this week, the Iraqi government briefed representatives from more than 80 countries and organisations on its programmes to rebuild the county, and listed its achievements.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, crowds of thirsty people waited for hours at emergency water pipes to fill jerry cans and buckets, while women washed clothes in the dirty waters of the Euphrates.

The citizens of this city do not give up easily. The shock, fear and chaos that came with the American takeover was soon replaced by black humour and stoicism. Outsiders are invariably astounded at how - after yet another bombing - street vendors can reopen their stalls, even as the bloodstains are being hosed from the pavements.

But the mood in the city is increasingly one of desperation. While residents wait in vain for promised reconstruction projects to materialise, the government cannot even agree on the make-up of the committee to draw up a new constitution, let alone its contents.

Sovereignty was returned to the Iraqi people from the occupying administration a year ago. But electricity output in the capital has decreased in the past five months - averaging only 854 megawatts per day now, compared with 2,500 megawatts before the war. The rationing system for sugar and baby milk collapsed at the beginning of the year, forcing many to go without.

Sadr City, the vast slum in the capital's west, is in the grip of a hepatitis outbreak. Forty per cent of Baghdad's homes have reported sewage on the streets. Fresh water had finally returned to most of the city by last night - but for only two hours a day.

And then there are the suicide bombers. After a brief lull earlier this month, when the Iraqi army launched Operation Lightning to root out insurgents in the city and made more than 1,000 arrests, they resumed their deadly work as usual last week.

Shortly after dawn on Thursday, four bombs exploded in Karada, a district known for its teashops and clothing stores, killing 15 people, only hours after three other blasts had torn through the Shula neighbourhood.

At one bomb scene, the mangled chassis of a car hung from a tree and the blue tiles were stripped from an adjacent mosque. Masked Iraqi police moved in, bringing central Baghdad traffic to a standstill for 90 minutes.

Standing beside a pool of blood, Abu Radhi, an architect, said: "This city was once the most beautiful in the Middle East. People would stroll by the river at dusk and the restaurants were filled with laughter. Now our life is this."