(REPORTER addresses the audience)

REPORTER:

A clear sign that the Iraqis believe war is imminent - they've put their foot down with the Human Shields.

No more hanging out at the Andalus Hotel having healing sessions, time to go and sleep in power stations, oil refineries and other installations which were bombed in the Gulf War and which could meet the same fate this time.

Over the weekend, about forty Human Shields got on the big red bus and headed back for London. Many had hoped to stay in hospitals and orphanages, but the Iraqis didn't see the point of that.

At a meeting on Saturday, the head of the Organisation of Friendship, Peace and Solidarity, which coordinates the Shields, said they must go to sixty target installations across the country.

After a minor altercation, compromise was reached: they would deploy in groups to six sites around Baghdad only.

No soft options like hospitals, only real targets. Anyone who wasn't happy had to leave.

This morning we went to the Daura Power Station, which provides electricity for about half a million people.

In 1991, it was hit first by a "silicon net" which disabled the plant and a few hours later bombed. One smokestack was destroyed and more than half the plant put out of action.

It took about a year to get it up and running again.

Sixteen Human Shields are living here. One said: "I'd be a robot if I said I wasn't scared. Everyone here on some level is a bit afraid. But every single day we do meditation at 5am to psyche ourselves up for this, and I know that when the bombs start falling I'm not going to go into shock, and I'm not going to be a wreck or a liability to the rest of the group."

I felt rather sorry for the manager of the power plant, Janan Matti, who now has to worry about the foreigners as well as his own staff. "We have three bomb shelters," he said.

"Iraqi people who work here are human shields too because they are also civilians, not military."

An oil engineer's wife who lives opposite the house where they stay said "We think they're heroes."

This is Lindsey Hilsum for Channel 4 News, Baghdad.