Amman, Jordan ? As an American armored pincer closed on Baghdad, a growing force of international aid workers was mobilizing just beyond Iraq’s borders Friday for a huge postwar relief effort — to meet water, food, medical and other needs to replace a “welfare state that’s been switched off,” as one aid organizer put it.

Journalists with advancing troops have already reported seeing Iraqis in the roads begging for food. Some military aid has been distributed, but because of wartime dangers only small shipments from aid agencies have made it into Iraq behind the U.S. and British military.

On Friday, the U.N. Children’s Fund sent a six-truck convoy to the outskirts of Basra with desperately needed water, the farthest UNICEF’s water supplies have reached into southern Iraq.

Frederick W. Schieck, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, speaks as 28,000 metric tons of bulk hard red winter wheat are loaded at the Port of Galveston in Galveston, Texas. Thursday's shipment of U.S. emergency food assistance is destined for the port of Umm Qasr in Iraq.

In northern Iraq, a 19-truck convoy carrying 500 tons of wheat flour from the U.N. World Food Program was scheduled to cross Friday from Turkey. Although no food emergencies are reported in the Kurdish-populated north, food warehouses are empty or nearly so, WFP spokesman Khaled Mansour said in Amman.

Because of the U.S. bombing of Baghdad’s telecommunications facilities, only sketchy reports were emerging on the numbers of people fleeing the threatened Iraqi capital.

About 10,000 were reported to have fled Baghdad for the Badrah area, near Iran 90 miles to the east, said David Wimhurst of the U.N. office for Iraq. East of Amarah, 130 miles to the southeast, about 30,000 displaced people had gathered near the Iranian border, he said.

“The situation inside Iraq is getting more critical every day,” Wimhurst said in Amman.

Almost no Iraqis have fled into neighboring countries to escape the 15-day-old invasion, but aid officials know that large, if uncounted, numbers have traveled from threatened areas to others they hope are safer — most moving in with relatives, or into schools or other public buildings.

The oversight agency, the International Organization for Migration, has based its planning on a projection of 2 million displaced Iraqis, said Chris Petch, the organization’s program manager.