BAGHDAD, 10 August 2003 — Riots broke out yesterday in Iraq’s southern city of Basra over the slow pace of postwar reconstruction. At least three soldiers and four Iraqi civilians were injured.

Residents hurled rocks and burned tires all over the city’s main streets as Iraqis raged in the blistering summer heat over the pace of reconstruction efforts by occupation forces.

The rioting started minutes after witnesses said a grenade was hurled at a British military truck near a gasoline station, where Iraqis waited in a long line for fuel, angered by the fact they were queuing for hours in a country with the world’s second largest oil reserves.

“We put crowd control measures in place at petrol stations to try to restore law and order,” spokesman Jonathan Spencer said. “The situation is beginning to calm down.”

It was the second major uprising against British troops in the past three months. In June, six British soldiers were killed in Majjar by armed Iraqis protesting house-to-house searches.

Occupation force officials met local leaders and British commanders blamed the shortages on oil smuggling, sabotage and looting. British forces also seized a tanker overnight, which they said was smuggling diesel oil out into the Gulf by sea.

Several streets and main roads leading into the city were blocked as black smoke rose from the fires. By late afternoon, many of the British forces appeared to have withdrawn leaving large parts of the city of two million in the hands of rioters.

Witnesses said angry Iraqis threw stones, burned tires and attacked cars registered in nearby Kuwait, which local people accuse of buying up diesel oil smuggled across the desert.

“All the disasters that have come upon us are because of Kuwait and Kuwaitis,” said one man, Abu Hassan, as a mob attacked Kuwaiti-registered vehicles.

“The British have been here four months and things have not improved. Now we have shortages in everything.”

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 summer temperatures soar above 50 degrees (122 Fahrenheit).

The shortage of diesel oil has meant residents, businesses and hospitals have difficulties running their generators.

Meanwhile, US troops came under renewed attacks yesterday that left at least four soldiers wounded, while in a video tape broadcast on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, a group of men claiming to belong to Islamic groups said they were responsible for recent attacks in Baghdad.

The men, whose faces were covered, warned that “the foreign troops... should be attacked in order to show to the world that we are against the occupation” of Iraq.

Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade on patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk were fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms early yesterday, said Lt. Col. Bill McDonald, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division operating in the area. Two soldiers were wounded in the explosion and were in stable condition, McDonald said.

Also yesterday, soldiers west of Kirkuk opened fire on a car that ran a military checkpoint, wounding two Iraqis, McDonald said.