When, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, brothers Saad and Ibrahim left their family home in the leafy middle-class Baghdad neighbourhood of Karada for the first time in two decades, they promptly got lost. After all, things had changed quite a bit over the 23 years that the al-Qaisi brothers had spent hidden away from Saddam’s secret services in a small upstairs room.

Thousands of people were left suffocating on Monday as a massive sandstorm brought life in the war-torn Iraqi capital to a virtual standstill. Nearly 1 000 cases of suffocation were reported at the city’s Yarmuk hospital, which saw one 60-year-old woman die. The capital’s main airport was also shut.