Iraq Watch: September 2, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Demonstrations both for and against the draft constitution were held across Iraq on Friday from the southern city of Basra to the northern towns of Tikrit and Ramadi.

About 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets in the Shiite city of Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, on Friday to voice there support for Iraq's newly finished constitution which is scheduled to be voted on in an upcoming October 15 national referendum.

The event in Basra - the city once referred to as the 'Venice of the Middle East' - was organized by the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party, the two largest Shiite parties invloved in Iraqi politics.

In Tikrit, a predominately Sunni city 180 miles north of the capital, an estimated 2,000 protestors held an anti-constitution rally. A similar demonstation denouncing the constitution was held in Ramadi.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of three American soldiers on Friday. Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed Thursday when there patrol struk an IED while another soldier was killed Wednesday south of Baghdad near Iskandariya.

In other violence Friday, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and nine wounded in a roadside bombing near Beiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

South of the capital, at least two Sunni Muslim worshippers were killed and four injured when gunmen opened fire on them in two separate incidents.

Also, souces report that Saddam Hussein's first trial will begin on October 19, just four days after the proposed national referendum on the draft constitution. The deposed Iraqi leader will first go on trial for the alleged massacre of Shiites in the town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt on him in 1982.