Baghdad, Iraq ? Enveloping the capital in an eerie orange glow, a blinding sandstorm Monday reduced visibility in Baghdad to a few feet – slowing traffic to a crawl, canceling a key meeting on the Iraqi constitution and sending hundreds of people to the hospital with breathing problems.

Howling winds whipped up desert sands overnight, coating the streets of the city in a gritty opaque haze. Though sandstorms are common in Iraq’s desert terrain, especially during the summer, the one that arrived overnight was the worst in two years, long-suffering residents said.

“Baghdad looks miserable today,” resident Ahmed Malik said. “Shops are closed as if there is no life in the city, as if a nuclear bomb attacked it. It’s completely abandoned.”

The storm’s fury forced Iraq’s political leaders to postpone key talks aimed at breaking an impasse over drafting the country’s new constitution by Monday’s deadline. A second round of talks had been set for last night but was delayed for at least a day.

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, had planned to attend the meetings, including the opening session Sunday night, but remained stranded in the northern city of Irbil, after flights into Baghdad International Airport were canceled because of poor visibility.

The capital’s weather forecasting center said the sandstorm was expected to last 48 hours, though lessening in intensity. Storms also were reported across Iraq’s border in Kuwait and in southeastern Jordan.

Iraqi soldiers secure checkpoints during a massive sandstorm Monday in Baghdad, Iraq. Occasional sandstorms create breathing difficulties and reduce visibility to meters causing airports to close and road traffic to reduce to a crawl.

Throughout Baghdad, cars coated in sand slowed to a crawl as the handful of residents who ventured outside covered their faces in scarves or surgical masks to keep out the dust.

An estimated 300 people crowded into Yarmouk Hospital complaining of respiratory problems – many of them asthma sufferers, said Dr. Muhannad Jawad. Hallways quickly filled with patients, many of them very young or very old.

“After the sandstorm started about 2 a.m., we realized that the hospital would be engulfed with people after curfew ended so we dedicated two big halls in the emergency ward with all the necessary medicines and equipment for them,” he said. “By 6 a.m., people were flooding into the hospital. They are still coming.”

The last time a sandstorm of this magnitude was reported was during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, when the military march to Baghdad was delayed for several days.