Gunmen Kill 1 During Wage Protest in Baghdad

Gunmen inside Iraq’s Science and Technology Ministry headquarters opened fire Sunday on an angry crowd of off-duty security guards, killing one and wounding three others who were protesting wage reductions, police and witnesses said.

The shooting highlighted a potential new source of instability in a country crippled by war and insurgency: After steep raises following the ouster of Saddam Hussein two years ago, some public employees are now finding fewer Iraqi dinars in their pay envelopes.

Iraq’s Facilities Protection Service, which posts armed guards at government buildings, is among the first agencies to feel the pinch.

In recent weeks, guards at the ministries of health and electricity have also protested pay reductions.

On Sunday morning, about 100 men who guard Iraq’s nuclear energy facilities and other Science and Technology Ministry sites demonstrated peacefully on the lawn outside ministry headquarters. Participants, who were unarmed, said gunfire from windows in the seven-story building put a bloody end to the rally. The protest leader was among the wounded.

Demonstrators counted at least three gunmen and said they were bodyguards of the minister, Rashad Omar. Iraqi police sealed off the building. Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadim said a police investigation of the shooting was still underway late Sunday.

One of the demonstrators, Bassim Adnan Majeed, 31, said his monthly pay packet had been lightened to the dinar equivalent of $12, from $22, when allowances for food and transportation were eliminated at the first of the year. He and others also complained that their ammunition was being rationed to a dangerously low level.

Ali Ahmed, 34, said each guard was limited to 17 bullets per work shift for his AK-47 automatic rifle. “How can we stand up to terrorists who have better weapons and more ammunition?” he said.

Iraqi officials said the Finance Ministry had ordered the pay cuts and was counting the withheld wages as tax revenue.

“People are demanding public services, and the government needs to pay for them,” said Kadim, the Interior Ministry spokesman. “We have to start somewhere, but every time we take a step to make someone pay his due there’s a demonstration in the street.”

Kadim called Sunday’s shooting “regrettable” but added: “There are troublemakers who do not want to change to a better government, who want to keep the country in a state of chaos. These guards should remember: Under Saddam they were getting a fraction of what they earn now.”

The shooting also reflects Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian strife. Protesters said the guards were mostly Shiite Muslim. The science minister and his bodyguards are Sunni Muslim Turkmens.

Insurgent bombs Sunday damaged a pipeline in northern Iraq, halting oil exports to Turkey, and wounded a civilian in the southern city of Basra, where the apparent target was a nearby police patrol.

In Baqubah, northeast of the capital, the body of a Shiite political leader and those of two relatives were found in an abandoned car. The motive for the killings was unclear.

Members of Abu Musab Zarqawi’s insurgent group posted a video on its website Sunday showing the execution of a blindfolded Iraqi captive who had identified himself as Col. Ryadh Gatie Olyway. The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed.

Associated Press quoted an Iraqi official as saying that Olyway was working as a liaison between the Interior and Oil ministries at the time of his abduction more than a month ago. The blindfolded man in the video was shown being shot in the head by a masked man after saying that he had supplied the U.S. military with names of former Iraqi army officers -- whose Sunni sect is leading the insurgency against the American-led multinational force in Iraq.

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Times staff writer Raheem Salman contributed to this report.