Samawah Governor Fired

"Reuters adds:

In the southern city of Samawa, guerrillas launched rocket-propelled grenades toward police and army. They destroyed three military vehicles. There had been a clash between protesters and police on Sunday, which left 1 dead and 40 wounded.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the provincial governing council of Samawa fired the governor, Muhammad Ali Hasani, after two days of clashes between police and demonstrators. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari sent a representative to the city in an effort to calm things down.

The Sadr Movement of Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr has been holding the demonstrations to protest lack of services. This tactic seems to be a way of unseating the elected government officials in key southern provinces, and of embarrassing the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrists' rival, which controls most provincial assemblies in the south after winning the elections last January. But it is also true that the services in these cities are not very good, in part because of sabotage."
Juan Cole