NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City drivers will wake up on Friday to the first widespread gas rationing since the fuel crisis of the 1970s, as the U.S. Northeast struggles to recover from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy and a subsequent snowstorm.

After a difficult commute Thursday night that saw heavily armed police trying to quiet crowds at area bus and train stations, New Jersey authorities are adding free buses and ferries Friday to try and ease commutes that have been four and five times longer than normal all week.

The recovery from Sandy stalled Wednesday after a snowstorm that plunged 300,000 homes and businesses back into darkness. By Thursday night much of the snow melted, and temperatures were due to warm slightly Friday, welcome news for the thousands of people still without power.

Bitter cold, rain, snow and powerful winds added to the misery of disaster victims whose homes were destroyed or power was knocked out by Sandy. The storm came ashore on October 29 and caused widespread flooding, leading up to as much as $50 billion in economic losses and prompting the medical relief group Doctors Without Borders to set up its first-ever U.S. clinic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was providing mobile homes to house those displaced by the storm, a reminder of the scramble after Hurricane Katrina seven years ago to tend to the newly homeless. Some evacuees will be put up nearly 200 miles from home, FEMA said, because there is little available space closer to the city.

GAS, PATIENCE RUNNING OUT

With drivers still struggling to find adequate fuel, New York City Mayor Michael Bloombergsaid Thursday the city would begin an indefinite program of gas rationing early Friday.

It is modeled on one New Jersey implemented last week - allowing drivers to fill up on alternating days depending on their license plate number - that has reduced lines dramatically.

Bloomberg indicated that the city had little choice.

"It now appears there will be shortages for possibly another couple weeks," Bloomberg said, later adding, "If you think about it, it's not any great imposition once you get used to it."

Neighboring counties would implement a similar program, he said, in an effort to cut down lines that ran for hours at local filling stations following Sandy. The city's iconic yellow taxis are exempt from the new regulation.

New Yorkers, never known for holding their tongues, let their exasperation with the bad weather show.

"Kick in the gas," the New York Post blared in a headline on its website, a day after its print newspaper hit the streets with the cover headline "God hates us!"

'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH'

A week after Sandy, Doctors Without Borders established temporary emergency clinics in the hard-hit Rockaways - a barrier island in Queens facing the Atlantic Ocean - to tend to residents of high-rises, which still lacked power and heat and were left isolated by the storm.

"I don't think any of us expected to see this level of lacking access to health care," said Lucy Doyle, who specializes in internal medicine at New York's Bellevue Hospital and has done stints with the group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya. "A lot of us have said, it feels a lot like being in the field in a foreign country."

Sandy's death toll in the United States and Canada reached 121 after New York authorities on Wednesday reported another death linked to the storm in the Rockaways.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo turned his ire on the power utilities, which he said had failed customers.

Some 696,000 homes and businesses in the region were without power as of late Thursday night.

The storm damage exposed flaws in the regulation of power utilities that will require a complete redesign, said Cuomo, who oversees the state-controlled utilities and appoints the members of the Public Service Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities such as Consolidated Edison.

"It is nameless, faceless bureaucracy that is a monopoly that operates with very little incentive or sanction. ... They have failed the consumers," Cuomo said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iranian warplanes fired at an unarmed U.S. drone in international airspace last week but did not hit the aircraft, the Pentagon said on Thursday, disclosing details of an unprecedented incident that triggered a formal warning to Tehran through diplomatic channels.

The November 1 intercept was the first time Tehran had fired at an unmanned American aircraft, in a stark reminder of how tensions between the United States and Iran could escalate quickly into violence.

If Iran had hit the drone, as the Pentagon believes it was trying to do, it could have forced American retaliation - with the potential consequences that entails.

According to the timeline provided by the Pentagon, two Iranian SU-25 "Frogfoot" aircraft intercepted the American drone at about 4:50 a.m. EST (0850 GMT) as it conducted a routine, but classified, surveillance mission over Gulf waters about 16 nautical miles off the Iranian coast.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said the aircraft fired multiple rounds at the Predator drone and followed it for at least several miles as it moved farther away from Iranian airspace.

"We believe that they fired at least twice and made at least two passes," he said.

International airspace begins after 12 nautical miles and Little said the drone at no point entered Iranian airspace. Last year, a crashed CIA drone was recovered inside Iran.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was quickly notified of the incident, as were members of Congress and the White House, Little added. The United States also sent Iran a warning through diplomatic channels, saying it would defend its military assets and would keep sending aircraft on such surveillance operations.

"There is absolutely no precedence for this," Little said. "This is the first time that a (drone) has been fired upon to our knowledge by Iranian aircraft."

Many questions about the incident remain, including why Iranian warplanes could not manage - if they wanted - to shoot down an unarmed drone, which lacks advanced capabilities to outmaneuver them.

Asked whether the Iranian aircraft were simply firing warning shots, Little said: "Our working assumption is that they fired to take it down. You'll have to ask the Iranians why they engaged in this action."

There was no immediate comment by Iranian officials.

SANCTIONS TIGHTENED

President Barack Obama has resisted calls from inside the United States and Israel for military action against Iran, focusing instead on crushing rounds of sanctions, which were tightened again on Thursday.

The United States imposed sanctions on Iran's communications minister and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for jamming international satellite broadcasts to Iran and censoring and closing newspapers and detaining journalists.

The sanctions are part of broader efforts to isolate Tehran, which denies U.S. accusations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian atomic program.

In an effort to drive Iran to compromise, the United States and the European Union have gone for the jugular - Iran's oil exports - over the past year.

The United States and Israel, which regards a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence, have also hinted at the possibility of military strikes on Iran as a last resort.

Obama has said the United States will "do what we must" to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and has repeatedly said that all options are on the table - code for the possibility of using force.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This undated photo released by the family shows five-year old Abeer Ali, one of two girls brutally raped and killed in a span of less than two months this year. The crimes were particularly brutal, even by the standards of a country where insurgents can still kill dozens in single day: Two young girls kidnapped, repeatedly raped and killed with blows to the head in Iraq's southern Basra province. (AP Photo/Family Photo)

This combination of two undated family photos photos shows four-year old Banin Haider, left, and five-year old Abeer Ali, right, who were brutally raped and killed in a span of less than two months this year. The crimes were particularly brutal, even by the standards of a country where insurgents can still kill dozens in single day: Two young girls kidnapped, repeatedly raped and killed with blows to the head in Iraq's southern Basra province. (AP Photo/Family Photo)

BASRA, Iraq (AP) — The brutal crimes struck a nerve, even in a country that has seen a horrific amount of bloodshed in the past decade: Young Iraqi girls kidnapped, repeatedly raped and then bludgeoned to death in two separate incidents near the southern city of Basra.

Despite a conviction in one case, a handful of arrests in the other and beefed up police patrols in the city, families in Basra remain on edge following the murders of 4-year-oldBanin Haider and 5-year-old Abeer Ali in a span of less than two months.

Now, many parents in and around the city won't let their children go to school alone or even play outside after class is out, fearing their daughters, too, could be snatched off the streets, sexually abused and murdered. Others are making plans to leave Basra altogether, saying they have lost confidence in the security forces' ability to keep children safe.

"These inhuman crimes make me think of the safety of my children," said Hazim Sharif, 38, a government employee and father of four. "I do not trust the security forces any more. I have to protect my family by myself."

To many in Iraq, the murders mark a new, more menacing type of violence than the country has previously encountered — at least in public.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, is considerably safer than Baghdad, and the recent attacks are seen as a particularly dark spot on an otherwise relatively quiet and stable province. The city of about 1 million and its surrounding province, which goes by the same name, is Iraq's main oil industry hub. The region is generally poorer and shabbier than the capital, but it is slowly beginning to flourish as international companies move in, attracted by the region's lucrative oil fields.

Basra police chief Maj. Gen. Faisal al-Ibadi and the head of the security committee in nearby Zubair, Mahdi Rikan, provided detailed accounts of the two cases to The Associated Press.

Banin was kidnapped Aug. 16 in Zubair, a rundown town just outside the city of Basra. Her family, from the nearby province of Dhi Qar, had come to town to visit relatives.

Police later found her body in a derelict area with her hands and legs bound. She was raped multiple times, and her head was smashed by what was believed to be a large brick, according to authorities.

An off-duty soldier assigned to a nearby army base, Akram al-Mayahi, was arrested in connection with the Banin's murder. He was found guilty on Oct. 22 and sentenced to death for abusing and killing the girl, said judge Jassim al-Moussawi, the spokesman for the Basra Federal Appeals Court.

Banin's family wants al-Mayahi to be executed publically at the scene of the crime as a deterrent, al-Ibadi said. The sentence has yet to be carried out.

The other young girl, Abeer, also came from Dhi Qar province, a relatively poor part of Iraq that many residents travel from in search of work, often for weeks at a time. She was abducted Oct. 11 while her family attended a wedding not far from the scene of Banin's murder.

Her body was found 12 hours later in an empty lot, bearing similar signs of trauma to the previous victim, though Abeer was also strangled with a shoelace, officials said.

Authorities later determined that the suspected kidnapper phoned nine friends and invited them to take part in the rape. So far, eight people have been arrested and have confessed. The case has yet to go to trial because the investigation is still under way. Authorities believe the soldier convicted in Banin's killing is not connected to Abeer's murder.

"I cannot rest or sleep while these criminals are still eating, drinking and sleeping in prison. They should be executed immediately," said Abeer's father, Ali Abid, a 30-year-old construction worker and father of four other daughters. "Iraq has become like a jungle where monsters maul the bodies of the poor people."

Reports of the two cases have sent a wave of fear through the streets of Basra.

Firas Khudier, 42, a businessman in Zubair, stopped sending his daughter Shahad to kindergarten out of fear she could be abducted. In the meantime, he has hired a taxi driven by a trusted relative to take his two older children to school even though it is nearby.

Sharif, a father of four, said he and his wife have begun escorting their children to school and back, and are keeping a closer eye on them even when they play just outside the house. Most parents in Basra are now doing the same, he added.

"They keep ... insisting on going out to play with their friends, but we have to remind them of the horrific story of the two poor girls," Sharif said.

In an attempt to calm public opinion, security forces have started deploying more police patrols, particularly near schools.

Some officials blame a rise in drug use for the crimes. Iraq's Interior Ministry recently cited the cases in calling on Iraqis to support an anti-narcotics campaign. Al-Ibadi said all of those arrested in the two cases are addicts who were under the influence at the time of the crimes.

Fawzia A. al-Attia, a sociologist at Baghdad University, said Iraq's decades of war and economic hardship also likely played a role.

"All these woes changed the social value system, weakened the role of the family and negatively influenced personality development," she said. "Young people in particular have started to feel the emptiness and boredom of unemployment, and (are increasingly disappointed) with religious and political institutions."

Many Basra residents see the focus on drugs as misplaced. They instead criticize Iraq's government and security forces for failing to provide adequate security.

Abid said blaming his daughter's killers' actions on drugs is just a way for the authorities to justify poor policing, saying that all the security forces care "about is the salary they get at the end of the month."

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Juhi reported from Baghdad.