Local oud player, Asaad al-Tamimi, says that he and his fellow musicians won’t stop playing because this is how they make a living.
The attack with the stun grenade was expected, he says. And it was not the first of its kind. “Between 2008 and 2010 there were a lot of similar attacks by extremist groups and one musician was even assassinated,” al-Tamimi says. “It was a tough time. We had to go into the desert if we wanted to practice.”
Some of the stun grenades seem to be being lobbed for political reasons too – in those cases, the targets are the houses of politicians and members of political parties, employees of the provincial council and of the South Oil Company in the Maqal and Five Mile neighbourhoods. There have also been attacks on shops and casinos in the Jazair, Jumhuriyah, Qibla and Hakimiyah areas. Surveillance cameras in these cases show that masked men carried out the attacks with stun grenades.
“Most of the stun grenades used in these attacks have been manufactured locally,” a local policeman told NIQASH; he was speaking anonymously because he was not authorised to talk to media.
As manufactured weapons, stun grenades are meant to temporarily disorientate the victim, or victims, rather than injure. They use light and noise to do so and they are most commonly used, for instance, against protestors at demonstrations or by police in civilian situations. Usually stun grenades do not kill, although they can injure.
Current evidence suggests that the stun grenades being used in Basra are different though; they are locally made and some seem to contain real explosive material which could potentially injure bystanders.
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