BAGHDAD: A heavy sense of dread hangs over the morning rush hour in Baghdad as Iraqis brace for the near daily explosion in a deadly game of Russian roulette, but most refuse to let the violence keep them at home.

"Every morning when I wake up I am scared about leaving the house," said Marion Mohamed, 40, who works for the justice ministry. "As I walk out of the door I kiss my four children goodbye as if it were the last time," she said, eyes darting nervously about her as she stopped briefly by the cement blast walls erected outside the ministry to protect it from car bombs or mortar fire.

Typical of the deadly violence that has plagued the country since the US-led invasion of March 2003, Justice Minister Malek Dohan al-Hasan, 83, emerged unscathed after he was targeted by a suicide car bomb attack last week, but three of his guards, including a nephew, were killed along with two civilians.

The blast hit Hassan's motorcade as it was taking him to work from his home in the west of the capital. "Sadly it is part of Iraqi society to live under the threat of death," said Raad Hashim Emin, 33, a lawyer at the ministry, as he hurried into the building.

Eyes fixed to the ground, marching quickly behind the barbed wire that lines the road outside the ministry, Sara Karim, 23, a new law graduate, decided to brave the trip to central Baghdad in pursuit of work.

"We all know that explosions can happen at any time and anywhere, but if I think like that then I will never leave home," she said earnestly. "I must go out to try to find work."

High-profile officials, Iraqi security forces and the US military have become favourite targets in a seemingly organized insurgency that aims to derail the interim government and US-led reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose caretaker government took power only last month, has vowed to crush the rebellion, but his tough words have made little apparent impact on the daily barrage of bombings and gunfire.

On July 14, a suicide car bomb ripped through a line of vehicles at a checkpoint outside Iraq's main government building, killing at least 10 people in the most serious attack against the new administration since it took power last month.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Imad al-Obeydi, 47, was slightly wounded in the blast, but remained at his post until the end of the day. He has arguably one of the most dangerous jobs in the capital - policing the traffic outside the heavily guarded Green Zone, home to the US-led foreign presence and an increasing number of Iraqi government offices.

"I am used to living dangerously, as I used to be in the army, so I am not scared," Obeydi said, while standing in a sea of honking cars, trucks and taxis, sweltering in the mid-morning sunshine.

"My children are scared for me but they also know that I am brave," he said. Stuck in traffic is another perilous situation suffered by countless Iraqis as they struggle to move around Baghdad's network of roads and side streets despite an increasing number of Iraqi police and army checkpoints.

"All Iraqi people are living in crisis," shouted Ali al-Obeydi, a retired man, stuck in a motionless bumper-to-bumper queue outside the Green Zone. "We expect explosions anywhere, at any time, and here we are unable to escape because of traffic," he said. "I am just waiting for the next boom."-AFP