AS BOMBS FALL, A SONG RISES FROM THE MOSQUE

The idea came to him when the first cruise missiles of the war began striking just after the dawn call to prayer March 20.

Now, day or night, whenever he hears another bomb or missile landing on his city, or the rattle of antiaircraft fire filling the skies, 38-year-old Mohammed Nasser rises from his quarters and walks into the ornate inner sanctum of the Al Buniya Mosque.

Striding to the microphones in his long gray robe, perhaps with one of his young sons tagging along at his heels, he fills his lungs and sings out in his deep baritone voice, “Allahu akbar” -- God is great -- followed by whatever prayers and verses from the Koran come to his mind.

The dirge lasts only a few minutes, but it is carried by loudspeakers for miles, soulfully steeling his compatriots in war.

The blue-domed mosque in western Baghdad, near the capital’s main train station, is decorated with the twirling letters of the famous calligrapher Hashem al Khatat. Standing outside Monday, Nasser explained why he and other muezzins, who normally summon the faithful to prayer five times daily, sing during the bombings, dozens of times each day.

“We sing in order to give calm and raise the morale of people defending the country,” said Nasser, who was interviewed in the presence of a government representative. “I have a tremendous feeling inside me when I mention the name of God, as if their planes will be brought down by God’s will.”

Nasser seems to sincerely believe that all Iraqis -- not just the nation’s leaders -- are being targeted by British and American forces, and that naturally it is his duty to help the armed forces and his country whatever way he can.

In any consideration of this war, the true attitude of the Iraqi people toward the government of Hussein and the arrival of U.S.-led forces has been a question not easily answered.

Occasionally, through a wink or a raised eyebrow, or a murmured comment away from this country’s ever-present listening ears, a few Iraqis will convey hope that Hussein’s demise would bring a better, normal life, the lifting of international sanctions and an end to the near-constant state of war.

That is the attitude that advocates of the war in Washington and London hoped would be expressed by the majority of Iraqis, leading to a quick ouster of Hussein soon after U.S. and British troops arrived. But if many people do hold such opinions, they have yet to act on them, perhaps waiting to see whether the regime does in fact fall.

So far, a good number of people here seem instead to be behaving more like Nasser.

Their reflex has been to rally against the invaders -- whom the government has portrayed as crusaders coming to steal Iraq’s wealth, or else as the agents of Israeli “expansionism and territorial designs on the Arab world,” as Foreign Minister Naji Sabri put it at a news conference Monday.

The muezzin said he did not believe the Americans and British wanted to liberate him from Hussein’s government.

“They are very greedy to get the resources of our country,” he said. “Why else would they cross all those continents to fight here?”

If Americans believe that Hussein is a hated dictator with weapons of mass destruction, he said, “They are being deceived.... We don’t have such weapons.”

As for Hussein, he said: “We love him and pray to God that nothing bad would happen to him.”

Nasser said his proudest moment was when an antiaircraft gunner came to him and thanked him, saying his singing helped him concentrate and shoot straighter.

The mosque singing has become a constant in Baghdad since the war began, like the oil fires that burn day and night to obscure the sky from allied pilots and the ever-expanding number of foxholes, trenches and bunkers that are starting to make some parks and open spaces look a bit like prairie-dog colonies.

Though bombing has been unrelenting, particularly heavy in the last two days, the physical result is still nothing like what happened in the bombardments of Berlin, Beirut or Grozny, Chechnya. The airstrikes are targeted and isolated, and many of the same sites are being hit two, three or more times.

In the sprawling Republican Palace complex on the west bank of the Tigris River, many buildings and barracks have been reduced to hollow shells with sides smashed and roofs collapsed.

But along the street just outside the compound, other buildings show no major structural damage. Windows have broken and stucco has fallen from the shock waves of the explosions, but otherwise, the adjacent area is unscathed.

Seven of the city’s 20 telephone exchanges have been targeted and destroyed, with rubble strewn in the street. In some cases, adjacent stores or houses have been damaged or destroyed. But a mere 100 feet away, all is normal.

Bombs struck the Bab Muadhan telephone exchange before dawn Monday, cutting off phone service to its 25,000 subscribers. By midmorning, scores of people clamored indignantly around the remains of the building, stumbling on the broken bricks, some vowing vengeance.

“If they come here, we will slaughter them like sheep,” one man, Sabah Kamal, said of American forces. He identified himself as a volunteer in Hussein’s Al Quds army, which Hussein created for what he called the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli rule.

After 12 full days of war in Baghdad, the picture is not one of generalized destruction but of cumulative untidiness. Accompanying that is a mix of rage and grief among people because of the rising number of civilian casualties, whether caused by American bombs or missiles -- as the Iraqis contend -- or by misdirected Iraqi air defense fire, as U.S. officials have suggested in some cases.

Among those buried Monday was Nidal Ali Jasem, a 41-year-old woman, deaf and mute from birth, whose right leg never worked properly. She died when a bomb fell near her home in southern Baghdad, said her nephew Ahmed Abdel Abbas, 32, the owner of a television shop.

The four relatives with whom she lived survived, but all needed to be hospitalized.

Jasem’s small, wrapped body was interred at the Sheik Marouf Cemetery in the center of Baghdad in a 10-minute ceremony attended only by Abbas, three cemetery workers and a teenage boy -- a stranger -- who put an olive branch on the molded earth that covered her remains.

“It is unfair,” Abbas said afterward. “She was quiet and kind, and she never bothered anyone.”

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.