British forces arrived on the scene and calmed the situation, using loudspeakers to say in Arabic "You will get what you deserve, but not in this way." They did not fire, even after one was hit in the leg by a stone.
At the hospital, officials said one ex-soldier had been killed, and relatives said they had come to collect the body of 40-year-old Abbas Kadhim, a non-commissioned officer. Hospital officials said they were treating three wounded men.
A spokesman for the British force based in Basra said he had reports of gunshots at the scene of the protest but did not know the source of the fire.
Coalition spokesman Dominic d'Angelo said police and British forces based in Basra had been sent to try to calm demonstrators outside the Central Bank building. He said he had no more information.
The soldiers said they had not been paid a monthly stipend equivalent to $50 since September.
The Coalition Authority had been dogged by protests by ex-servicemen after it disbanded Iraq's military in May, leaving more than 250,000 ex-soldiers destitute. In one incident in June, U.S. forces killed two demonstrators when a protest turned violent. Later, authorities agreed to pay monthly stipends of $50 to $150 to rank-and-file troops of the former Iraqi Army.
photo credit and caption:
Assyrian Christian Father Adda stands near St. Matthew monastery on Mount Maqloub, northeast of Mosul in Northern Iraq, northwest of Baghdad, January 6, 2004. The Assyrian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated tomorrow with reference to the Julian calendar, which has a difference of two weeks to the Gregorian calendar. REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk
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