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★阿修羅♪
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ガーデイアン：英軍がバスラの暴徒鎮圧で射撃し少年2人負傷など。
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1015816,00.html
British troops battle to control mobs in Basra
Rioters attack petrol stations in protest over dire shortage of fuel and electricity
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer
British troops in riot gear fought to restore calm in the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday as dire shortages of fuel and power sparked disturbances.
One witness said soldiers fired into the air to keep back a crowd at a petrol station as Muslim clerics desperately appealed to the crowds for calm. Another said the British fired baton rounds at a crowd, wounding two young boys.
Reports that at least three soldiers were hurt in the riots had not been confirmed last night.
British commanders blamed the shortages on oil smuggling, sabotage and looting. Main roads leading into Iraq's second city were blocked as black smoke rose from fires. By late afternoon, many of the British forces appeared to have withdrawn, leaving large parts of the city in the hands of the rioters, who threw stones, burned tyres and attacked cars registered in nearby Kuwait.
Locals accuse Kuwait of buying up diesel oil being smuggled out across the desert and the sea.
'All the disasters that have come upon us are because of Kuwait and Kuwaitis,' said one, Abu Hassan.
'The British have been here four months and things have not improved. Now we have shortages in everything.'
There has been ill feeling between Iraqis in the south and their wealthy Kuwaiti neighbours since Saddam's invasion of the oil-rich state in 1990.
British officials said they were doing all they could to stamp out oil smuggling and the sabotage and looting of power cables that have left electricity supply at 'minimal' levels, depriving Basra of refrigeration and air-conditioning as temperatures soared above 50C.
Residents, businesses and hospitals have difficulties running their own generators.
'There has been widespread unrest in Basra today in response to the current critical fuel and power shortage,' the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Basra said in a statement. 'Many districts have had minimal power for four days now.'
The statement said an Italian official in the Coalition office in southern Iraq, Mario Maiolini, met a delegation of community leaders to listen to their concerns.
One British military spokesman said violence broke out outside at least four petrol stations and troops rescued the occupants of a Kuwaiti tanker in the process of being torched.
'We are taking measures to control the crowd,' he said. 'We are doing our best to bring about a normalisation of the situation.'
He could not confirm that troops had opened fire. The owner of the flashpoint fuel station where the tanker was burned said soldiers fired baton rounds, wounding two boys in the crowd.
Shia Muslim clerics were at the scene, on Saad Square, trying to convince the crowd of hundreds to stop hurling stones at the soldiers.
Hundreds also marched on the headquarters of the British forces demanding the restoration of power and fuel supplies.
The Navy said yesterday it had intercepted a ship smuggling 1,100 tons of oil out of Iraq.
Royal Marine commandos from HMS Sutherland boarded the vessel, the Panama-registered Navstar 1, in the northern Arabian Gulf late on Friday and arrested the captain and his Ukrainian crew.
'This is the most significant seizure we have had since the end of the war,' said Lieutenant Commander Richard Walters.
The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said coalition forces were determined to put an end to any illegal activities hurting Iraq's economy and its people.
'The seizure of the Navstar 1 demonstrates the commitment of the coalition forces and the Iraqi police to protecting Iraq's assets, so that they can benefit all Iraqis, rather than the criminals,' he said.
Earlier in the week, US authorities seized 12 oil barges and detained 150 people in a two-week campaign to stamp out the activity.
Damage to Iraq's major northern oil pipeline has meant sales since the war have been restricted to supplies from its Basra fields.
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