Iraqis Riot In Basra, One Protester Dead (2nd Day)

Reuters/Yahoo ^ | 8-10-2003 | Joseph Logan

[blam]

Iraqis Riot in Basra; One Protester Dead

Sun Aug 10,10:12 AM ET

By Joseph Logan

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqis enraged by fuel shortages rioted in Basra Sunday, forcing British troops to fire warning shots for a second day in an effort to quell some of the worst unrest seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein

At least one Iraqi involved in protests was killed and two others were wounded, but it was not clear who had fired the shots which struck them, reporters in the city said.

Hundreds of young men barricaded roads in the second city with blazing tires and hurled chunks of concrete at passing cars. British tanks patrolled the streets and armored vehicles guarded petrol stations where increasingly frustrated drivers queued for hours in 120-degree heat.

Anxious to keep a lid on tempers in Shi'ite Muslim southern Iraq , the British have blamed oil smugglers, looters and saboteurs for power cuts and a shortage of diesel that has meant little electricity even for those with household generators. But that has done little to soothe the anger.

"They did not give us what they promised, and we have had enough of waiting," said 19-year-old student Hassan Jasim.

The south has been relatively quiet since the war as Iraq's 60-percent Shi'ite majority savors the end of the repression it suffered under Saddam. But influential clerics, some of whom want an Iranian-style Shi'ite theocracy, have warned the British and Americans they are impatient to rule themselves.

Violence in the four months since the U.S.-British invasion force toppled Saddam has been concentrated in the former leader's American-controlled Sunni heartlands further north.

Two U.S. soldiers and a journalist were wounded in a grenade attack in Baghdad Sunday, a U.S. military spokesman said. Al Jazeera television said one of its cameramen was hurt along with U.S. soldiers when a grenade was thrown at a U.S. patrol from an upper story window at Baghdad University.

Further north, the U.S. spokesman said, two soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack. On a road near Tikrit, Saddam's home town 110 miles north of the capital, a Reuters correspondent saw a wrecked American truck beside a crater which a soldier at the scene said was caused by a mine.

In the western town of Hit, relatives of two men buried on Sunday said they were shot by U.S. troops the day before.

A soldier died of apparent heat stress while riding in a convoy north of Ad Diwaniyah, which lies about 75 miles south of the capital, the U.S. military said.

"TERRORIST THREAT"

U.S. commanders, who are hunting Saddam himself in the area, blame his diehard loyalists for the violence.

But they say they are winning the guerrilla war, killing fighters and rounding up their leaders.

The U.S. military said it had detained Saddam's interior minister, Mahmud Dhiyab al-Ahmad, whose defiant news conference wielding a chrome-plated Kalashnikov was one of the images of the war.

A U.S. spokesman in Baghdad shrugged off the fact that his capture had already been announced a month earlier, saying that now U.S. officials were sure they had their man.

With the field of suspects still wide open for a truck bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad last week, the U.S. authorities are also concerned that other groups, including al Qaeda, may be ready to strike American interests in Iraq.

Paul Bremer, the country's U.S. administrator, told the New York Times that hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda-linked group once based in the Kurdish-controlled north during Saddam's reign, now planned major attacks in Iraq.

Bremer, an anti-terrorist expert, said Thursday's bombing, which killed 17 people, could have been the work of a mainly foreign group like Ansar or of supporters of Saddam.

In the latest of a series of similar appearances, al Jazeera aired a tape Sunday recorded earlier in the week of a group of armed and masked men calling for armed resistance against the U.S. and British occupation.

BRITAIN BLAMES SABOTEURS

A spokesman for the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad said damage to the power systems around Basra were part of a deliberate attempt by Saddam loyalists to sow discontent.

"The sabotage operations, particularly on electricity, are being conducted and encouraged by those who are deliberately trying to cut off the electricity to raise the temperature, of tempers and in people's houses," Charles Heatly said. "This is designed to hurt the Iraqi people by members of the old regime."

Saturday, troops fired in the air, donned riot gear and loosed off rubber bullets at crowds who torched a Kuwaiti tanker truck and Kuwait-registered cars. Local people accuse Kuwaitis of conniving at smuggling out cheap Iraqi oil.

Heatly said a tanker laden with smuggled diesel, seized by British marines off the Iraqi coast, had been confiscated and was due to dock at nearby Umm Qasr later Sunday.

[tsmith130]

I think that's an unfair criticism of the British. They are having the same problems the American troops are having in Baghdad.

[blam]

"I think that's an unfair criticism of the British. They are having the same problems the American troops are having in Baghdad."

I agree however, weren't they the first to critize because we weren't following their example?

[King Prout]

"(The British) did not give us what they promised, and we have had enough of waiting," said student Hassan Jasim, 19.

Oh, really? Well, young man, have you suddenly decided to get up off your knees, pick up some repair equipment and work gloves, go out to the oilfields and pipelines, and put your LABOR where your mouth is???

I didn't think so.

[tsmith130]

True, but that is because I sick and tired of unfair criticism of our troops by the British.

I agree, but the criticism of our troops comes from the British press....not the British troops.