Amman, Jordan ? U.S. ground forces near Baghdad are on the threshold of a concrete battlefield teeming with millions of civilians, at a time when civilian deaths already have angered many throughout the world.

American commanders, more than ever, may have to call on discipline and precision in their troops to avert large numbers of civilian casualties.

“We’d like to see that become zero,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said of the civilian toll. But “that’s not the way it’s ever been on the battlefield,” the Central Command spokesman added.

From the Red Cross, custodian of the laws of war, came a word of caution Thursday.

“A commander is under an obligation under international humanitarian law to do everything in his power to prevent harm to the civilian population,” said Kim Gordon-Bates of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

This “instant war” of satellite TV, satellite phones and the Internet has put images of civilian casualties on worldwide display:

l In early television footage of broken bodies of children in chaotic emergency rooms in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

l In the frantic scenes in Baghdad’s al-Shaab district after missiles struck shops and homes and killed at least 14 people, and when dozens more were killed in a later airstrike on a working-class marketplace in Baghdad’s al-Shoala district.

l In this week’s photographs of mothers and children crammed into coffins in the central town of Hillah.

Hospital Corpsman Nesive Bell, of Patterson, N.J., holds a child who was inside a car that came under fire at a checkpoint north of Diwaniyah, Iraq, in the Iraqi desert. Thursday's incident left two men and one 2-year-old child dead. One woman was also seriously injured and two other children, including this child, suffered injuries from flying glass. The rising civilian death toll in Iraq is raising concern throughout the world.

Growing reaction

Reaction from the belligerents has been swift: statements from the U.S. command that its troops take extraordinary measures to protect innocent lives, and denunciations from Baghdad of “mercenary invaders” recklessly shooting civilians.

Away from the front lines, the reaction has built daily.

Jordan’s King Abdullah said Wednesday his people “strongly condemn” the killing of women and children in neighboring Iraq, adding, “I, as a father, feel the pain of every Iraqi family.” On Thursday, his prime minister summoned the U.S. ambassador in Amman to express Jordanian anger over the growing civilian toll.

That toll cannot be confirmed in the midst of war. Twelve years after the Gulf War, the Iraqi civilian death toll is unsettled — estimates range from the low thousands by Washington to 45,000 by Baghdad.

Earlier this week, the Iraqis said some 600 civilians had been “martyred” and more than 4,000 wounded in the first 12 days of the new war.

Whatever the true number, it continues to climb. On Thursday, for example, U.N. officials in Amman said they had learned that 300 civilian wounded had flooded the hospital in Hillah in one day.

Most were women and children, said David Wimhurst of the U.N. office for Iraq. “Medical facilities are having difficulty,” he said.

Preparing for the aftermath

Although verification is difficult, it seems likely that hundreds of Iraqi civilians have died, projecting from what journalists have seen, including uncounted bombed-out civilian vehicles along Iraq’s roads.

American researcher-activist Marla Ruzicka, now based in Amman, said she intended to conduct a survey of the war’s civilian cost when access to Iraq is possible, just as she and Afghan colleagues did in Afghanistan last year on behalf of the U.S.-based Global Exchange organization.

Based on that work, the U.S. Congress set a precedent last July, approving a proposal sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to aid Afghans who suffered losses in U.S. military operations there. On Tuesday, Leahy submitted similar language for Iraqi victims in the proposed $70 billion-plus special war budget. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

The traditional rules of war, codified in the Geneva Conventions, forbid the targeting of noncombatants. Beyond that, they hold commanders to the principle of “proportionality” — an armored unit, for example, can’t destroy a village and its inhabitants to kill one sniper.

American troops are trained in how to deal with civilians in war zones. Leaflets have been dropped warning Iraqi families to stay away from U.S. positions. American commanders repeatedly say their forces do not deliberately attack civilians. But the ways of war bring them under attack.

One example: The deadly suicide bombing at a U.S. checkpoint last Saturday, by an Iraqi in civilian clothes, made troops more jittery. As a result, “my men won’t take any chances,” a U.S. officer said. Two days later, a barrage of U.S. cannon fire at a highway checkpoint killed seven to 10 women and children in a van.