Three die as violent protests continue in Basra

IRAQ: Two Iraqis and one Nepalese Gurkha were reported killed yesterday in the southern port city of Basra during a second day of protests against power cuts, lack of water and rising black market fuel prices.

The first fatality was said to have occurred when shots were fired after an angry crowd surrounded several unidentified vehicles.

The Gurkha, who was employed by a private security company delivering mail for the UN, was killed in an ambush, while the second Iraqi was apparently killed by gunfire from Czech troops supporting the British army.

British troops monitored prices and customers' behaviour at petrol pumps where long queues had formed and tempers flared as the temperature soared to 55-60 degrees Celsius.

On Saturday about 1,000 Basrawis burnt tyres and threw rocks and bricks at British troops armed with clubs. The British military spokesman, Capt Hisham Halawi, blamed the outages on saboteurs and thieves who steal power cables to sell the copper they contain.

Saturday's violence was seen as the most serious in the mainly Shia Muslim south since the Baathist regime was toppled four months go.

The events in Basra reminded the US occupation authorities that the 60 per cent Shia majority is as angry about the lack of services and employment as the Sunni minority, seen by the US as being supportive of the former regime.

Two US soldiers were wounded by small arms fire in the northern city of Kirkuk and two were injured by a roadside bomb attack on their humvee in Baghdad. The US military also announced that the former interior minister, Mr Mahmud Diab Ahmad, number 29 on the US list of most wanted members of the ousted regime, had surrendered on Friday. It had been mistakenly announced that he had been arrested in July.

During a news conference, Mr Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator, said the British ship HMS Sutherland seized the tanker MV Navstar on Friday night on suspicion of smuggling diesel fuel.

It was found to be carrying at least 2,420 tonnes of diesel "critically needed in Iraq", Mr Bremer stated. The ship, said to have Panamanian registration, was impounded and the crew will be handed over to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution.

He also said that elements of Ansar Islam who fled to Iran after the war had infiltrated back into Iraq. Ansar is connected with al-Qaeda, the network of militants blamed for the 2001 attacks on the US. US intelligence sources have accused the Ansar of being implicated in last week's bombing of the Jordanian embassy which killed 19.

Meanwhile, leading Shia cleric Sheikh Abdul Karim Madani was detained during an overnight raid by US troops at the town of Baquba north-west of Baghdad. A dozen other men were rounded up, including two bodyguards. Troops reportedly confiscated $14,000 collected for the construction of a mosque.

The previous arrest of the sheikh early in July, on suspicion of being connected to an arms cache found in the town's mosque, sparked protests during which one man was killed by a mysterious explosion.

The sheikh, the son of a former grand ayatollah, supports the moderate, wait-and-see line adopted by Iraq's current senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani. However, he has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the occupation of Iraq by foreign forces.

The arrest of the popular Sheikh Madani is likely to inflame passions in Baquba, one of the flashpoints surrounding the capital. Iraqi observers say that such actions are alienating the populace instead of winning hearts and minds.

The almost simultaneous release of a tribal leader, Sheikh Saad Naif Mish'hen Hardan, after 12 days of detention, has angered and humiliated members of his influential Dulaymi tribe based at a village near Ramadi, another of the so-called "Sunni triangle" towns known for their resistance to the US occupation.