BAGHDAD (AFP) ? Iraqi authorities tested a Baghdad-wide siren system on Friday designed to alert residents to foreign attacks, natural disasters and fires, the first such system since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.
Hundreds of sirens are due to be rolled out across the country in the coming months and years, but at 11:00 am (0800 GMT) on Friday, 126 loud hailer sirens rang out across the violence-wracked capital for one minute.
"The system has four tones to warn of natural disasters, fires, pollution and war," Major General Latif Karim Mizhir, the head of Baghdad's emergency response unit, told AFP. A fifth tone, which was used in the test, signals all-clear.
"It will also help us connect with emergency response centres in all of Iraq's regions, and to address the people," he added.
Friday's siren alerts were preceded by a media campaign and a mass mobile phone text message sent to residents to warn them of the test. Baghdad authorities also used the loudspeaker system Friday morning for reminders.
A total of 300 sirens have so far been installed -- 126 in Baghdad and the rest in provincial cities -- with a further 700 set to be put in place across the country.
Despite what is ostensibly a city-wide deployment, parts of the capital did not hear the sirens, such as the south Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora.
Saddam's regime had its own siren system in the major cities that was used frequently during the 1980-1988 war with Iran and the 1991 Gulf War, but no such system has been used since he was overthrown by US-led forces.
"I was born listening to these sirens," said 62-year-old Abu Shaala, speaking in central Baghdad's commercial Karrada district. "From the years of the Iran-Iraq war, and then the Gulf War, and then the invasion in 2003."
Nearby, 36-year-old Uday said that the volume of the siren was "lower than the old one".
"The older one used to shake us in our beds, and woke us up in the middle of the night," he said. "It only meant war, and it only meant that we had to take cover."
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