Naseer Al-Nahr • Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 11 August 2003 — Two people were killed yesterday in Iraq’s second city of Basra as widespread rioting continued in the town for the second day. A Nepalese Gurkha security guard and an Iraqi were killed in yesterday’s violence as British troops came under fire as they struggled to control a population enraged by the failure of the occupying forces to restore basic services. At least eight Iraqis were wounded in the rioting.

The violence was some of the worst in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled by US-led forces on April 9 and occurred in a city at the heart of the mostly Shiite south, which has been relatively peaceful since Saddam was ousted.

Southern Iraq’s British-run administration said the Gurkha security officer was killed by Iraqi gunmen. The man, who worked for private security contractor Global Security, was in a vehicle delivering mail for the United Nations.

Reporters in Basra said the dead Iraqi was killed by gunfire. It was not immediately clear who had fired the shots in a city, which like the rest of Iraq, is awash with weapons.

Young Iraqi men hurled chunks of concrete at vehicles, while British armored vehicles guarded petrol stations where increasingly frustrated drivers queued for hours as temperatures in Basra soared above 50 Celsius (120 Fahrenheit).

In a repeat of some of the violence on Saturday, cars from nearby Kuwait were targeted. Basra residents accuse Kuwaitis of involvement in smuggling cheap Iraqi oil out of the country.

In and around Baghdad, five US soldiers and 10 Iraqis were wounded yesterday. On the campus of Baghdad University, 10 Iraqis and two US soldiers were wounded in a grenade blast targeting American forces outside an Islamic college, US military sources said.

Two of the wounded included a driver and a cameraman for the Al-Jazeera satellite news channel on campus to interview a Muslim US soldier, said Lt. Col. John Kem from the First Armored Division.

Elsewhere, two soldiers were also wounded by a bomb at 10:15 a.m. (0615 GMT), said Staff Sgt. Amy Abbott. And another US soldier was wounded at 1:40 p.m. in a rocket-propelled grenade attack.