Baghdad • Traumatised by suicide bombs, sectarian militias and ethnic cleansing, the citizens of Baghdad are facing another horror this summer: Day after day of blast-furnace heat without electricity or water to keep them cool.

The temperatures regularly exceed 52C (126F). You are hit by a wall of heat whenever you step outside. You could fry that cliché egg on a car in seconds. But the millions of Baghdadis unlucky enough to live outside the green zone receive fewer than three hours of electricity a day. They have no power for fridges, fans or air-conditioners.

Most of the time there is no water in the taps. It is the worst deprivation they have suffered since the fall of Saddam in 2003. “It is unbearable. It is hell, a jail in hell,” said a 28-year-old engineer who would not give his name.

They improvise as best they can. Generators are one of the few growth industries in Baghdad. Their hum is the city’s background noise. Yaseer Muhammad Kathoum, a businessman, says that he sells 60 a week, and they cover the pavements in front of shops. At night families try to sleep on their rooftops despite the roar of US helicopters overhead. On Thursday, several women and children were injured while sleeping on their roofs in west Baghdad when helicopters opened fire on Shi’ite militants.

Water is almost as scarce as electricity. Many Baghdadis have bought pumps that suck water from the pipes whenever it is flowing. This is usually in the middle of the night, so everyone leaves their taps on just in case.

An Iraqi employee of The Times spent $150 digging a 10-metre well in his garden. But for most people the only relief comes from blocks of ice bought from street vendors. Often, that ice is just frozen river water, but they drink it as it melts. Ahmaad Ali Al Hasani, 39, a doctor, said that he received 20 to 25 patients a day — mostly children — suffering from acute diarrhoea and food poisoning.

Tempers flare and fights are commonplace. A survey by the Electricity Ministry showed that the average household in Baghdad spent $171 (£65) a month for a few hours’ electricity each day — that in a country where $400 is a decent monthly wage. “The Iraqi people spend their money on fuel, water and generators, and every day is worse than the day before,” the engineer said.

During Saddam’s time Baghdad received as much as 22 hours of electricity a day. Its residents cannot understand why, four years after his removal, their city is — as Karim Wahid Al Hassan, the Electricity Minister, admitted at a press conference this week — “semi-paralysed”. Some blame the Americans, others the widely reviled government of Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, but neither is the real culprit.

The US Corps of Engineers has spent $4bn on more than 500 electrical projects, raising national capacity to 4,500 megawatts a day from a grid that was wrecked by 12 years of war, sanctions and looting. But demand has surged by 70 per cent since 2003 as televisions, computers and other electrical appliances have poured into the country. Iraq now requires 9,500 megawatts.

A much bigger problem is the refusal of other provinces to share their power with Baghdad, which has few power stations of its own. Saddam starved the Shi’ite provinces of the south, and the Kurdish provinces of the north, of electricity. Now, it appears, it is payback time. While Baghdad bakes, cities such as Mosul enjoy plentiful electricity. Dr Karim could offer only cold comfort to Baghdad’s sweltering citizens. He said that it would be three or four years before they could expect any relief.