BAGHDAD, 11 November 2003 — The capital’s Sadr City slum was tense yesterday, a day after US soldiers shot dead its mayor. Meanwhile, another US soldier was killed in a town south of here and Iraq’s US governor Paul Bremer predicted local and foreign fighters would step up violence to stop reconstruction.
Hundreds of people turned out to mourn the death of the mayor of the vast Sadr City district of Baghdad, denouncing US forces. The US military said a soldier had shot a man outside the district council building on Sunday after he fought with another soldier and tried to grab his gun. The man died later from his wounds, the military said. It declined to name him.
Women dressed in black beat their chests in traditional mourning and men carried banners declaring Mayor Muhanad Ghazi Al-Kabi had been “killed by American bullets” and condemning the US soldiers involved.
Kabi was the head of a US-backed interim council for Sadr City.
The US military said a man had tried to drive into the council compound on Sunday and been stopped by soldiers guarding it. He became involved in a fight with one soldier while another soldier fired warning shots.
“The driver continued to fight and wrestled the soldier to the ground while still attempting to pull the weapon from the soldier,” a military statement said. “The other soldier shot the driver in the upper leg. The driver was evacuated to a nearby military hospital where he died of his wounds. The incident is under investigation.”
In the latest lethal attack on US forces, a military policeman was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade on Sunday west of Iskandariya, about 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad. The United States has now lost 151 soldiers killed in action since it declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.
Bremer told Britain’s Times newspaper US-led occupation forces would not be driven out of Iraq because the price of failure was too high for the country and for the Middle East.
“We’re going to have increased attacks and increased terrorism because the terrorists can see the reconstruction dynamic is moving in our direction,” Bremer said.
“It will be more of a problem in the months ahead unless the intelligence gets better,” he added, saying hundreds of fighters from Sudan, Syria and Yemen had entered Iraq.
In the latest attack on the oil sector vital to Iraq’s reconstruction, three gunmen opened fire on an oil company executive’s car, wounding him in the leg and killing his son. The attempt to kill Mohammed Al-Zibari, an executive responsible for oil distribution in a state-owned company, took place yesterday in the northern city of Mosul, police said.
Separately, three US soldiers were wounded and a Humvee vehicle was damaged early yesterday when a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy drove over a bridge in Mosul, police said.
