The United Nations on Monday ordered all its aid workers and weapons inspectors to evacuate Iraq, joining diplomats and other foreigners fleeing ahead of a likely invasion by U.S.-led forces. Sources said the U.N. team was expected to quit Baghdad on Tuesday morning, adding to gloom among local Iraqis who had been clinging to slender hopes of peace.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in New York on Monday that his evacuation order affected both U.N. arms inspectors and humanitarian workers, and that all U.N. work in Iraq would be suspended -- including the oil-for-food program.

Officials said more than 300 U.N. international employees were currently in Iraq, including some 135 weapons inspectors and their support staff.

A transport carrier is stationed at Baghdad airport ready to evacuate up to 200 U.N. staff, U.N. sources said. A second Boeing 747 jet is stationed on the runway in Larnaca airport in Cyprus on standby to pick up remaining personnel.

The last time U.N. weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq, in December 1998, Washington and London launched military strikes some 12 hours later.

Several foreign journalists and television reporters also left Baghdad on Monday, with two major U.S. television networks, ABC News and NBC News, telling their teams to leave.

The U.S. administration has advised all foreign journalists to get out before war starts.

On Iraq's southern border with Kuwait, U.N. monitors quit the demilitarized zone across which any invasion is set to pass.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi Kurdish children look out of the window of their car as they depart Arbil, northern Iraq, February 17, 2003. Kurds, expecting war, are fleeing to the hills near the Iranian border fearing an attack on their cities. (Caren Firouz/Reuters)