BAGHDAD, 20 December 2005 — Thousands of angry Iraqis took to the streets yesterday to protest government-imposed gasoline price increases as the oil minister threatened to resign if the measure was not reversed. Police fired in the air to disperse some 3,000 stone-throwing demonstrators in the southern city of Nasiriyah who took to the streets in the wake of Sunday’s government announcement of a 300 percent increase in gasoline prices. Local officials, in a bid to restore calm, ordered petrol stations to cancel the price hikes. In the southern towns of Amarah, several dozen demonstrators threw stones at a British army patrol while chanting slogans hostile to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.