All but a handful of the once sizeable Indian community that lived and worked in Umm Qasr have fled this increasingly lawless southern Iraqi border town.

Until 48 hours ago, there were just under 1,000 Indians working at the docks and in local factories like the Akash Jabbar Housing Contracting Company.

Now they fear the Iraqis as well as the invading armies of Britain and America. To add to their woes, lawless gangs of youths, freed of Saddam Hussein's stiflingly repressive security forces, feel free to rob and loot as they please.

The exodus of Indian nationals began in the first hours of war when what should have been a simple exercise by the American 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to seize this town turned into a five-day bombardment.

Narayanswamy, aged 49, a caretaker from Worli in Mumbai, said, "We were all very scared."

He is one of only three Indians who have remained in Umm Qasr. A handful managed to make their way across the border to Kuwait. All the others had no choice but to leave for the besieged city of Basra where they are obliged to sit out the rest of the conflict.

The road to Kuwait has been blocked by the Kuwaiti Army, which has taken over the demilitarised zone at the border, and American and British forces, which man the five checkpoints at various points up to the border.

Like his compatriots across the border in Kuwait, Narayanswamy has not been briefed about the chemical or gas threat from the retreating Iraqi army.

He adds that despite the words of reassurance regularly broadcast by British forces, there has been no mention of gas masks or chemical protection suits.

"It's become a matter of kismet," he says. "It's not up to me to decide when I should quit this world."

Narayanswamy's main concern for the time being is access to fresh drinking water. The war has cut off the regular supply of water from the Basra mains and the local population is entirely dependent on the water brought in by the British Army.

There is plenty of water available a few miles away on the Iraqi side of  the demilitarised zone, but getting it to local families in the area is proving a nightmare.

Narayanswamy says the British war machine should have ensured that there were enough tankers available to take the water to families in the town centre.

Part of the problem for the British forces is that they seriously underestimated the number of local families living in Umm Qasr. The first estimate was of 4,000 people. Later that figure was revised to 40,000. Now, with the exodus of refugees from Basra, that number has swelled because rumour had it that Umm Qasr was overflowing with clean water and plentiful food supplies.

This is far from the case. The director of the hospital and its only doctor, Mohammed Misr, told rediff.com how he pleaded with British forces to provide him water. Instead, Royal Marine commandos turned up with boxes of chocolate.

"When have you ever heard of a hospital that had no water?" Dr Misr said. "The lack of this basic amenity is now taking its toll on the already precarious health of the people who have been wilfully neglected by the Iraqi regime for the past 12 years."

The reason Narayanswamy and other Indian workers came here was the belief that Iraq's only deep water port would be a place of prosperity.

Far from it. Those who worked in the port earned the equivalent of 10 US cents a day. Deprivation was bad enough, but what the Indians and others have been unable to tolerate are shooting sprees and artillery duels that rage daily between the British Army and local fedayeen forces loyal to Saddam.

Narayanswamy says the Indian community was never seen as a threat, nor was it wealthy enough to attract the attention of predatory locals who see all foreigners as fair game for food, cash, water and anything else of value.

One French television team that arrived in Umm Qasr two weeks ago thought they had secured a local base in the town. But after three days their landlord ransacked their possessions and looted them of everything they had.

The members of a Middle Eastern television team, Dubai-based MBC, had all their equipment worth US $400,000 stolen within a day of arriving.

One Swedish journalist was held up at gunpoint on the main road. He was ordered to strip and allowed to leave dressed only in his underpants.

Many foreign journalists have assumed that all Iraqis would be anti-Saddam and grateful to see friendly foreign faces. But the reality has been much more complex.

As the owner of the local petrol station told rediff.com, "Saddam did some bad things, but he did some good things too. Anyway, what happens in our country is our business; we don't like foreigners."

rediff.com Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia is the co-author of Saddam's Bomb, on Iraq's search for nuclear weapons.