British troops in the tense southern city of Basra greatly reduced their presence in the streets on Thursday, apparently responding to a call from the provincial governor to severe cooperation until London apologises for storming a police station to free two of its soldiers.
For the second day in a row, no British forces were seen accompanying Iraqi police on patrols of Basra, as they routinely had in the past.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb hit a United States convoy in southern Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding six, and suspected insurgents gunned down at least eight Iraqis in four separate attacks on Thursday, officials said.
In New York, Iraq’s minister of foreign affairs said insurgents are likely to step up attempts to disrupt next month’s referendum on the country’s new Constitution, and that the next three months are critical for the country’s future.
“Nowhere are the goals of freedom, democracy and progress more at stake,” Hoshyar Zebari told United Nations Security Council members at an open meeting on Wednesday. “We know our clear way forward, but we need your help. We need the help of every member nation and this organisation to win this fight. We stick together, or we lose together.”
In an interview with Associated Press Television News at his office in Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie called Monday’s attack by British forces on a police station in Basra “a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.
The fighting also raised new concerns about the power that radical Shi’ite militias with close ties to Iran have developed in the region around the southern city of Basra, questions about the role of Britain’s 8Â 500-strong force in Iraq and doubts about the timetable for handing over power to local security forces.
On Wednesday, hundreds of Iraqi civilians and police officers, some waving pistols and AK-47s, rallied in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, to denounce “British aggression” in the rescue of two British soldiers.
Basra Governor Mohammed al-Waili, who has called the attack “barbaric” and a product of imperial arrogance, threatened to end all cooperation with British forces unless Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government apologises for the deadly clash with Iraqi police.
Several hours after the protest, Basra’s provincial council held an emergency meeting and voted unanimously “to stop dealing with the British forces working in Basra and not to cooperate with them because of their irresponsible aggression on a government facility”.
Britain defended the raid.
Disagreement
There has been disagreement about just what happened late on Monday, when British tanks crashed into a jail to free two British soldiers who had been arrested by Iraqi police and militiamen.
Earlier that day, a crowd attacked British troops with stones and Molotov cocktails. At least five Iraqis were killed in the violence and others wounded, police said.
In London, British Defence Secretary John Reid and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari tried to minimise the effect of the fighting, saying on Wednesday that it would not undermine the relationship between the two nations or their determination to lead Iraq to peace and democracy.
But the provisional council demanded that Britain apologise to Basra’s citizens and police and provide compensation for the families of people killed or wounded in the violence. The council also said it would punish employees who had not tried to defend the Basra police station from the British military attack.
The unanimous vote threatened to worsen the increasingly volatile atmosphere in Basra, where the British had prided themselves on their good relations with the Iraqi authorities.
Still, apart from the police patrols, it remains unclear what the council’s vote to stop cooperating with the British will mean in practice.
Attacks continue
In Baghdad, the roadside bomb in Baghdad that killed one US soldier and wounded six exploded at 10.30pm local time on Wednesday in the Dora section of Baghdad, said Sergeant First Class David Abrams of the US Army. The residential area of the capital has been the site of many attacks by insurgents against US forces and Iraqi police.
Abrams said he could not immediately identify the victims of the attack or their unit.
The US military also said that an American soldier died on Wednesday night of injuries sustained in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk. No details of what had happened were provided.
The two deaths raised the US death toll since the start of the war to 1Â 909.
Near the northern city of Kirkuk, a bomb damaged an oil pipeline, sending plumes of black smoke and fire up into the air, officials said. The bomb, which exploded late on Wednesday, was placed beneath the aboveground pipeline, which connects the Bay Hassan oil fields with Kirkuk in northern Iraq, said police Brigadier Sarhad Qadir.
Officials in Iraq’s Northern Oil Company said the heavily damaged pipeline will be repaired within five days.
Insurgents frequently target the oil pipelines as part of their campaign against the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition, and continuing sabotage of oil installations often halt oil exports from northern Iraq to neighbouring Turkey.
Iraq’s current oil exports of about 1,6-million barrels a day mostly go through its southern ports, which have suffered far fewer insurgent attacks.
Drive-by shootings
Elsewhere, scattered violence, often by suspected insurgents conducting drive-by shootings, continued in the capital and other areas of the country, as they do nearly every day.
Unidentified men in a speeding car used machine guns to kill Colonel Fadil Mahmoud Mohammed, a local police commander, and his driver on Thursday morning as they drove on a highway in a town near Baquba, a city north of Baghdad, police said.
Six people also were killed in the capital, including a man and two of his sons whose home in the New Baghdad area was raided by about 25 gunmen dressed in police uniforms and black masks, said police Colonel Ahmed Abod. A second son was kidnapped. Abod said the father, Muhsin Akmosh Al-Timimi, had been working with foreign companies operating in Iraq.
In another drive-by shooting on Thursday morning, two police officers were killed and one wounded when their patrol was attacked in north-east Baghdad, said police Colonel Ahmed al-Alawi.
A civilian working for a private company, Ali Salim, also was shot and killed while waiting outside his home in western Baghdad for a taxi to take him to work, said Dr Muhanned Jawad in Yarmuk hospital, where the victim was rushed after the drive-by shooting. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writer Tarek El-Tablawy in Baghdad contributed to this report