Iraqis enraged by fuelshortages rioted in Basra today. British troops fired 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 twoothers were wounded, but it was not clear who had fired theshots which struck them, reporters in the city said.
Hundreds of young men barricaded roads in the second citywith blazing tyres and hurled chunks of concrete at passingcars.
British tanks patrolled the streets and armoured vehiclesguarded petrol stations where increasingly frustrated driversqueued for hours in 50 degree (120 Fahrenheit) heat.
Anxious to keep a lid on tempers in Shi'ite Muslim southernIraq, the British have blamed oil smugglers, looters andsaboteurs for power cuts and a shortage of diesel that has meantlittle electricity even for those with household generators. Butthat has done little to soothe the anger.
"They did not give us what they promised, and we have hadenough of waiting," said 19-year-old student Hassan Jasim.
The south has been relatively quiet since the war as Iraq's60-percent Shi'ite majority savours the end of the repression itsuffered under Saddam. But influential clerics, some of whomwant an Iranian-style Shi'ite theocracy, have warned the Britishand Americans they are impatient to rule themselves.
Violence in the four months since the US-British invasionforce toppled Saddam has been concentrated in the formerleader's American-controlled Sunni heartlands further north.
Two US soldiers and a journalist were wounded in a grenadeattack in Baghdad on Sunday, a U.S. military spokesman said. AlJazeera television said one of its cameramen was hurt along withUS soldiers when a grenade was thrown at a US patrol from anupper storey window at Baghdad University.
Further north, the US spokesman said, two soldiers werewounded in a bomb attack. On a road near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown 170 km (110 miles) north of the capital, a Reuterscorrespondent saw a wrecked American truck beside a crater whicha soldier at the scene said was caused by a mine.
In the western town of Hit, relatives of two men buried onSunday said they were shot by US troops the day before.
A soldier died of apparent heat stress while riding in aconvoy north of Ad Diwaniyah, which lies about 75 miles south ofthe capital, the US military said.
US 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, killingfighters and rounding up their leaders.
The US military said it had detained Saddam's interiorminister, Mahmud Dhiyab al-Ahmad, whose defiant news conferencewielding a chrome-plated Kalashnikov was one of the images ofthe war.
A US spokesman in Baghdad shrugged off the fact that hiscapture had already been announced a month earlier, saying thatnow US officials were sure they had their man.
With the field of suspects still wide open for a truck bombattack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad last week, the U.S.authorities are also concerned that other groups, including alQaeda, may be ready to strike American interests in Iraq.
Paul Bremer, the country's U.S. administrator, told the NewYork Times that hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam, an alQaeda-linked group once based in the Kurdish-controlled northduring 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 mainlyforeign group like Ansar or of supporters of Saddam.
In the latest of a series of similar appearances, al Jazeeraaired a tape on Sunday recorded earlier in the week of a groupof armed and masked men calling for armed resistance against theUS and British occupation.
A spokesman for the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad saiddamage to the power systems around Basra were part of adeliberate attempt by Saddam loyalists to sow discontent.
"The sabotage operations, particularly on electricity, arebeing conducted and encouraged by those who are deliberatelytrying to cut off the electricity to raise the temperature, oftempers and in people's houses," Charles Heatly said. "This isdesigned to hurt the Iraqi people by members of the old regime."
On Saturday, troops fired in the air, donned riot gear andloosed off rubber bullets at crowds who torched a Kuwaiti tankertruck and Kuwait-registered cars. Local people accuse Kuwaitisof conniving at smuggling out cheap Iraqi oil.
Heatly said a tanker laden with smuggled diesel, seized byBritish marines off the Iraqi coast, had been confiscated andwas due to dock at nearby Umm Qasr later on Sunday.