GENEVA, March 24: Warnings intensified of a humanitarian crisis in Iraq on Monday as fighting in the south delayed entry of much needed aid and water grew short in the country’s second city, Basra.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for urgent action to make sure there was enough water in Basra, a southern city of some two million people where temperatures can soar to 40 degrees Celsius.

The United States and its ally Britain were hoping to gain quick control of the south around Basra and nearby Umm Qasr, the country’s only deep-water port.

But five days after the military campaign began, neither is fully in the hands of alliance forces and aid deliveries have yet to start.

Getting aid flowing is vital for the US-British alliance to underline their message that their fight is with Saddam, who the allies accuse of having banned weapons of mass destruction, and not with ordinary Iraqis.

Malnutrition already strikes 1.3 million Iraqi children under the age of five, or one in four, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

A United Nations run oil-for-food programme, under which Iraq is allowed to sell oil to buy food and other civilian supplies, is suspended and it is not yet known when it will resume.

Around 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people rely on the programme which was set up after economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

British International Development Secretary Clare Short said if it were not reinstated “it would be very difficult to avoid a serious humanitarian crisis”.

Nevertheless, the World Food Programme, which distributed much of the supplies under the U.N. scheme, estimates Iraqi families have stockpiled enough for some six weeks.

Despite heavy bombing raids on Baghdad, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday that electricity installations had not been damaged and hospitals and water treatment plants were working.

But the agency did report a growing shortage of drugs for ailments such as asthma.

Aid agencies have warned that any lasting cut in supplies of clean water would lead to a surge in disease.

In Basra, water supplies were less than half the normal level following a power failure on Friday at the main treatment plant on the northern outskirts of the city.

Although other plants were able to keep some 40 percent of the usual needs flowing, the quality was poor, the ICRC said.

“I have heard a report from the (International) Red Cross that the people in Basra may be facing a humanitarian disaster in that they have no water and they have no electricity,” Annan told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

“I think urgent measures should be taken. A city of that size cannot afford to go without electricity or water for long. Apart from the water aspect, you can imagine what it does for sanitation,” he said.

In Kuwait, ICRC spokeswoman Tamara al-Rifai said the agency was seeking safety guarantees in order to repair the Wafa-al Qaed plant but that it was not clear who had control of the area.

“We’re confident we’re going to get access, at some point. But the situation is volatile,” she said. —Reuters