Anti-American protests grew in Baghdad and in southern Iraq today as US forces struggled with the task of rebuilding the country after toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Exasperated US military officials tried to hamper the media from covering new demonstrations in Baghdad.
Elsewhere, some 20,000 people in the Shi'ite Muslim bastion of Nasiriyah railed against a US-staged meeting on Iraq's future.
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Some 200 to 300 Iraqis gathered outside the Palestine Hotel to express their rage at what they said was the US failure to restore order after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last Wednesday.
For the first time, US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest, moving reporters and cameras about 30 metres from the barbed-wired entrance to the hotel.
"We want you to pull back to the back of the hotel because they [the Iraqis] are only performing because the media are here," said a Marine colonel who would not give his first name or title.
The protests came as the Americans delivered a first progressreport in their effort to restore Iraq to normalcy and head off criticism over continued lawlessness and a lack of basicservices.
AFP