Region | Iraq
Basra residents protest deteriorating security
Thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday in southern Basra, protesting deteriorating security in a city where Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for safety last December.
- AP
- Published: 10:26 March 9, 2008
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Demonstrators chant slogans during a protest in Basra, 550km south of Baghdad.
Baghdad: Thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday in southern Basra, protesting deteriorating security in a city where Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for safety last December.
In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the urban centre of an oil-rich region, Shiite groups have been wrestling for control of the area.
Residents are becoming increasingly alarmed about security, saying that killings, kidnappings and other crimes have increased significantly since British forces turned over responsibility for the city at the end of last year.
In February, two journalists working for CBS were kidnapped in Basra. One was released but the other, a Briton, is still being held.
A long line of marchers, estimated to be as many as 5,000 people, demonstrated near the Basra police command headquarters yesterday, demanding that the police chief, Maj Gen Abdul Jalil Khalaf, and the commander of joint military-police operation, Lt Gen Mohan Al Fireji, resign.
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