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Briton left in flames by Iraq rioters
22nd March 2004
 British soldier was set alight by a petrol bomb during riots in the southern Iraqi city of Basra that left 14 troops injured.
The unnamed soldier was seen running down a street with his head and shoulders on fire.
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said the 14 soldiers were evacuated to a nearby British military hospital at Shaibah. None is in a life-threatening position but three are described as "seriously injured".
Protesters threw rocks at British soldiers riding in tanks and standing behind plastic riot shields in the streets of Basra.
Scores of Iraqi demonstrators were protesting a failure to get jobs with the local customs police.
An MoD spokesman said it would be wrong to see the incident as "a terrorist-related attack." Instead, he said, it was British soldiers acting to bring public unrest under control. About 8,000 British soldiers are based in southern Iraq.
The British soldiers were reported to have fired tear gas at around 500 Iraqi demonstrators protesting at their failure to get jobs with the local customs police.
The chief of Basra customs, Colonel Zafer Abdel-Nabi, said that the demonstrators thrown rocks, petrol bombs and a grenade at the troops.
Nine of the the soldiers were wounded in a grenade explosion, he said.
Some demonstrators were reported to have shouted slogans in support of Saddam Hussein and protesting at Israel's killing of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City. According to witnesses they chanted: "We are all sons of Yassin".
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