BAGHDAD, Iraq – Enveloping the capital in an eerie orange glow, a blinding sandstorm yesterday 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.

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 next Monday’s deadline. A second round of talks had been set for yesterday evening but was delayed for at least a day.

The head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, 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 were also reported across Iraq’s border in Kuwait and in southeastern Jordan.

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.

For Baghdad’s residents, this summer has been particular brutal. Power shortages from insurgent attacks have left most families with only a few hours of electricity a day during a broiling summer where temperatures routinely hover around 113 degrees.

“It was the most awful night that I ever spent in my life. The sandstorm engulfed our house as the electricity went out. We all were suffering and couldn’t sleep at all,” said Ali al-Yassiri, 33, who owns an herb shop in the northern Baghdad district of Azamiyah.

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

Elsewhere, American Marines discovered a car bomb factory yesterday in a western Iraqi town near where 20 members of the American unit were killed last week, the American military said.

Six vehicles rigged with explosives were found in the hideout in the northern part of Haqlaniyah, one of a cluster of towns in western Anbar province long believed to be a stronghold of Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters.

American and Iraqi forces also found five roadside bombs yesterday on a road in Haqlaniyah, the statement said. All were detonated in place. As part of a major offensive to clear the restive area, Marines have been continuing their sweep of Haqlaniyah and other communities in the area despite the deaths of 20 of their comrades last week.

Saddam Hussein’s family, meanwhile, said it has dissolved his Jordan based legal team and appointed Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi as the “one and sole legal counsel.” The move was seen as reorganizing the defense ahead of Saddam’s trial.

One of the Iraqi judges who have interrogated Saddam also accused the ex-leader’s lawyers of making up stories of ill-treatment.

In an interview Sunday, Judge Munir Haddad, an Iraqi Kurd, told Associated Press Television News that Saddam’s first trial will begin “within 45 to 50 days.” The first trial will involve Saddam’s alleged role in the 1982 massacre of Shiite Muslims in Dujail north of Baghdad.

Mr. Haddad denied recent claims by Mr. al-Dulaimi that the former president was attacked during a court appearance in late July and said such stories were an attempt to get the trial moved to Europe, where the death sentence is banned.