Iraq Watch: September 21, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Hundreds of angry demonstators took to the streets in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday to protest recent British military action - including the storming of a police station on Monday to free two undercover British soldiers who had been detained by Iraqi authorities earlier in the day for allegedly opening fire on Iraqi police - in the predominately Shiite city.

The Basra provincial council, on Wednesday, 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.''

Basra's governor, Mohammed al-Waili, demanded an immediate apology from British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the act which he called, "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."

Elsewhere in Iraq on Wednesday, two U.S. soldiers were injured in a roadside bombing near the Abu Grahib district of western Baghdad.

In the al-Mansour neighborhood - also in western Baghdad - two Iraqi police, one Iraqi solder, and five insurgents were killed in a five-hour gun battle near the United Arab Emirates emabassy. Eight other Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the clash which occurred after a hostage escaped and alerted Iraqi security forces of the insurgents location.

Also in the capital, two Iraqi police commandos were gunned down and three others injured when they were attacked by militants in Baghdad's northwestern Shula district. Nearby, two unidentified bodies were found.

Three more bodies were found by police near Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, chief editor of the As-Safeer newspaper, Hussein Jubri, announced that two of the Iraqi papers reporters have been killed since Sunday in the volatile northern city of Mosul.