A foreign security guard and two Iraqis were killed in a second day of violence in Basra on Sunday in which British troops fired warning shots as crowds attacked vehicles and blocked streets with burning tires.

Cars dodge tires set ablaze during a riot in the southern city of Basra on August 10, 2003. British troops fired shots in the air to scatter rioters for the second straight day, as protests over fuel and power shortages gripped Iraq's second largest city. [Reuters]

The British patrolled in tanks as hundreds of stone-throwing Iraqis rampaged in protest against fuel and power shortages. In one incident troops said they returned fire from gunmen, but a tense calm settled over Iraq's second city by evening.

The violence was some of the worst in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled by US-led forces on April 9 and occurred in a city at the heart of the mostly Shi'ite Muslim south, which has been relatively peaceful in the wake of his fall. Iraq's majority Shi'ites were repressed under Saddam, a Sunni Muslim.

The British blame oil smugglers, looters and saboteurs for the fuel and power shortages, but Basra residents are angry at seeing fridges and air conditioners stop working as summer temperatures soar to more than 120 Fahrenheit.

Southern Iraq's British-run administration said the security guard, a Nepalese Gurkha working for Global Security, was in a vehicle delivering mail for the United Nations when he was killed by gunmen. Retired Gurkha soldiers from the British army are widely employed by security firms in Iraq.

Reporters in Basra said one Iraqi was killed by gunfire. It was not immediately clear who had fired the shots in a city, which like the rest of Iraq is awash with weapons. Two other Iraqis were wounded by gunfire.

Czech troops operating alongside the British said they also had to resort to warning shots and that another Iraqi was killed when he fell under the wheels of a truck he was trying to climb.

A Defense Ministry spokesman in Prague said the troops fired the shots after Iraqis threw stones at a convoy carrying water to a Czech field hospital. A military vehicle was damaged.

ARMORED VEHICLES GUARD PETROL STATIONS

British troops in armored vehicles guarded petrol stations where frustrated drivers queued for hours in the heat. Some Iraqis took an injured man to hospital in a school bus whose windows had been shattered by stones.

"(The British) did not give us what they promised, and we have had enough of waiting," said student Hassan Jasim, 19.

"It's not political. We don't have gas, power or salaries...all I want is water," said Fadil Salman, a driver.

Influential clerics, some of whom want an Iranian-style Shi'ite theocracy, have warned they are impatient for the running of the country to be returned to Iraqi hands.

In a repeat of some of Saturday's violence, cars from nearby Kuwait were targeted. Basra residents accuse Kuwaitis of involvement in smuggling cheap Iraqi oil out of the country.

Most of the violence since Saddam's fall has been concentrated in the former Iraqi president's Sunni heartlands in central Iraq where U.S. forces are stationed.

Two US soldiers and a journalist were wounded in a grenade attack in Baghdad on Sunday, a US military spokesman said. Al Jazeera television said one of its cameramen was hurt along with US soldiers when a grenade was thrown at a U.S. patrol from an upper story window at Baghdad University.

Further north, the US spokesman said, two soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack. On a road near Tikrit, Saddam's home town some 110 miles north of the capital, a Reuters correspondent saw a wrecked US truck beside a crater which a soldier at the scene said was caused by a mine.

The US military said a soldier died of apparent heat stress while traveling in a convoy. Troops clad in body armor and helmets have orders to drink large amounts of water to combat dehydration.

Fifty-five US and six British troops have been killed by hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1. Several foreign civilians have also died.

US commanders mainly blame Saddam's die-hard loyalists for attacks on their troops, but say there is evidence of foreign terrorists coming to Iraq to target Americans.

The commanders believe they are closing in on Saddam himself and say they are stamping out the raids by killing and rounding up fighters.

Washington's top civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam -- an al Qaeda-linked group once based in the Kurdish-controlled north during Saddam's rule -- were planning major attacks.

Bremer, an anti-terrorism expert, told the New York Times last week's bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in which 17 people were killed could have been the work of either Saddam loyalists or a mainly foreign group like Ansar.

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