DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Iraqi security forces have clashed with Shiite Muslim mobs who seized several government buildings in a southern city, leaving many dead, an opposition group said.
The violence occurred Thursday in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, according to Bayan Jabr, the Damascus representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.The Iran-based group said in a statement Friday that President Saddam Hussein's forces had pounded two Basra neighborhoods with mortars and tanks, "triggering fierce battles in which many people were killed."
It was not clear if the unrest had ended. The report could not be independently confirmed, and there was no reaction from the Iraqi government, which usually does not respond to opposition claims.
However, on Friday night, state-run Iraqi television showed scenes of Basra with shops open and people milling around, apparently in an attempt to demonstrate all was normal on the streets. And the leader of the ruling Baath Party in Basra, Abdul Baqi al-Saadoun, announced on television that Saddam had allocated more money for the city.
Jabr, the opposition official, told The Associated Press on Saturday that people armed with light weapons had taken control of Baath Party offices and security and government buildings. No other details were available.
The opposition Supreme Council statement described the unrest as a "limited uprising."
Jabr said the violence was a reaction to accusations by Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, the military commander of southern Iraq, that a Shiite cleric was behind last month's killing of the country's top Shiite leader, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sader.
Iraq's Shiites, who are a majority in the country and overwhelmingly so in the south, have a history of friction with the government, which is largely made up of Sunni Muslims. A Shiite uprising after the 1991 gulf war was brutally crushed by government forces.