Protesters gathered yesterday in Amara in southern Iraq, demanding compensation for at least five Iraqis killed when police and British troops opened fire to quell a violent demonstration.
In the nearby city of Basra, an Iraqi-born US citizen working for the civilian administration in southern Iraq was found shot dead, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said.
Spokesman Mr Dominic d'Angelo said: "His body was found together with that of another man, who was not associated with CPA South."
There were no further details on the killings. Guerrillas fighting the US-led occupation in Iraq have often targeted Iraqis cooperating with the civilian administration.
Tension flared on Saturday in Amara, 365 km southeast of Baghdad, when a demonstration over unemployment turned violent.
Iraqi police believed they were shot at during the protest and returned fire, while British troops with armoured vehicles were deployed to support them, Britain's Defence Ministry said in a statement. It said British troops opened fire when grenades were hurled at them.
All the dead were Iraqi civilians.
"One, maybe two, (of the dead) were possibly killed by British troops," British army spokesman Maj Tim Smith said in Amara yesterday.
"Those troops were firing in self-defence. It was quite clear that a number of objects were thrown at the British troops, possibly grenades. I can assure everybody that they only fired in self-defence."
Yesterday scores of Iraqis, many of them relatives of those killed the day before, staged another protest demanding compensation. Iraqi police and British troops watched from a distance but did not intervene.
Meanwhile, in the northern town of Mosul, an official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said two mortar rounds hit the roof of the party's headquarters yesterday, and two hit nearby houses.
-(Reuters)