Schools and hospitals. Hospitals and schools.

In neighborhoods and villages across Iraq, the pattern is always the same. Iraqi forces assumed American troops would not deliberately destroy civilian structures. So that's where they put their ammunition.

The presence of such large stocks of guns, bullets, and bombs further complicates US efforts to restore Iraq to a level of prewar normality. It requires an enormous effort to clean up the dangerous stockpiles. In addition, it suggests that those with an anti-American agenda in Iraq are probably well armed. And that could mean trouble for US troops in the weeks and months ahead.

"Every school, every hospital we go in we find weapons," says Col. Steven Boltz of the US Army's V Corps. There are over 2,000 such sites across the country, officials say.

In Baghdad alone, the 3rd Infantry Division has removed 2.6 million small-arms rounds, nearly 50,000 heavy machine-gun rounds, 13,700 grenades, 50,000 RPG rounds, 7,700 artillery rounds, and nearly 19,000 mines.

In addition, they have found more than 20,000 rifles, 4,200 pistols, 995 RPG launchers, 286 mortar tubes, 26 tanks, and one missile launcher.

Significant amounts of ammunition and weapons were hidden in arms caches in every section of the city, from outlying suburbs to the city center near the banks of the Tigris.

"I was in Bosnia, so I am not surprised by the volume," says Capt. Elisabeth Walker, assistant operations officer for the 3rd Infantry. "But I think probably Iraq is worse. It is an astronomical amount of stuff, and it's in houses and neighborhoods."

Colonel Boltz agrees. "We didn't realize the extent and amount of these weapons," he says. "Every town with a population over 30,000 had ammunition stored in it."

One of the most recent finds came in a neighborhood in western Baghdad. There are 11 classrooms at the Al-Ibtahal School, but since February no education has taken place in any of them. All were used to store ammunition. Desks and chairs were stacked outside in the central courtyard.

US soldiers have been working for a week to clear the site, and two of the 15-by-20 foot classrooms are still filled with waist-high piles of antiaircraft rounds.

First Sgt. Ronald Cole of Glennville, Ga., says the Army occasionally hires local workers for $2 a day to help remove the munitions. "We've hauled off truckloads," he says. "It will take about a week more to clean out."

Initially, when US forces encountered weapons caches, they destroyed what they discovered. Now, ordnance experts are only destroying munitions deemed dangerously unstable. The rest are being stockpiled for eventual use by the new Iraqi armed forces.

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