Armed with torches, they go into the warehouses to recover, at immense risk to themselves, tens of thousands of shells left behind by the former army in the hope of selling the copper for 370 dollars a ton.

"Those doing the looting are former officers and soldiers who became jobless after the coalition disbanded our army," said Captain Khodair Sayel of the police station in Haditha, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

That they do so at their peril was made plain on Saturday when an explosion at an ammunition dump near Haditha left at least 25 people killed and six others wounded, according to local council head Mohammad Nael Assaf.

The dump is one of many army weapons bunkers on an area stretching over 85 square kilometers (34 square miles), he said.

Dressed in the olive green uniform of the Saddam Hussein era, Sayel explained that the former soldiers "unscrew the head with their bare hands, scratch the explosive and take the copper cartridge which weighs 11 kilograms (24 pounds) to sell it to merchants in Haditha."

The haul is transported to scrap metal dealers in Baghdad who melt the copper and ship it outside the country.

An Emirati newspaper recently reported that Dubai customs had seized three ships that sailed from Iraq via Iranian waters with 775 tons of copper on board, adding that one ton fetched 1,700 dollars abroad.

"There are tens of thousands of Jordanian, Syrian and Soviet shells and it would take the looters more than two years to empty the warehouses," Assaf told AFP, adding that he had asked the US army to "destroy the bunkers in view of the danger they pose."

Neither the fear of losing a limb nor the threat of being burned and dying, and even less the prospect of arrest, is deterring the looters.

"We have detained 41 people for questioning since Friday, but others keep coming," Sayel remarked.

"We are poor. We having nothing to eat," explained Akid Mohsen Halas, a 27-year-old who was hospitalized after suffering severe burns in the weekend blast.

"Saddam paid me 150,000 dinars (120 dollars), but the Americans are only paying 70,000 dinars (under 60 dollars). I have no choice," said former non-commissioned officer Rafaa Akil, a father of five.

Saturday's deadly explosion was preceded by a blast in June in the Daulab depot near Hit, 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, and another in Mohammadiat near Haditha.

The site of the latest explosion on the outskirts of the village of Haklamiyah, 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Haditha, looked as if it had been struck by a hurricane.

The doors of the depot had been blown out, hundreds of shells were strewn outside along with the charred remains of three trucks belonging to the looters. The stench of death filled the air.

Captain Steve M. Smith of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment told AFP that "we don't know the number of casualties because we cannot enter inside the bunker."

About 40 Iraqis showed up and wanted to dig out the bodies, "so I took the leader of the group and I showed him the bombs everywhere, they were stuck on the ceiling which is about to collapse," he said.

"So if they use the shovel they will cause an explosion and kill even more people. When I explained to the leader, he agreed with me," he said.

Smith said he told the leader he "would do everything I can to get them out, but I don't want to risk my men either. So I called an explosives expert and he is going to find a solution.

"We have arrested more than 100 looters in this place in the last few days and they are now being handled by Iraqi police forces," he said.

"When we release them and give them back their vehicles, we catch them the next night and that goes on over and over. But now I have told them that I will not return their vehicles, maybe this will be a message."

WAR.WIRE