60 die in Iraq; Ecuador simmers
BAGHDAD: Police snipers fired at demonstrators in Baghdad on Friday, as the death toll rose to 60 people in three days of violent national protests against government corruption.
In an overnight TV address, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said he understood the frustration of the public but there was no “magic solution” to Iraq’s problems. He made reform pledges, but these drew a scornful response from demonstrators.
The violent demonstrations have escalated by the day since they first erupted on Tuesday, sweeping across the country spontaneously, without public backing from any organised political group and taking the authorities by surprise.
Security forces have fired live ammunition at crowds of mainly young men, and gunmen have occasionally fired back. Hundreds were wounded, including members of the security forces as well as demonstrators.
Security and medical sources gave a death toll on Friday of 60 killed across Iraq in three days of unrest, the vast majority of the deaths in the last 24 hours as the violence accelerated.
“It is sorrowful that there have been so many deaths, casualties and destruction,” Iraq’s most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-sistani, said in a letter read out by his representative.
Authorities shut roads into the capital from the north and northeast and were sending reinforcements to Baghdad’s densely-populated east. Military convoys were being sent to Nassiriya, the city worst hit by the violence.
Protesters in Baghdad gathered in darkness by a bonfire set among the flaming wreckage of an armoured vehicle, across the Tigris River from the government compound.
ECUADOR DETAINS 275 PEOPLE OVER PROTESTS
Quito:protests over fuel subsidy cuts paralysed transport in major Ecuadorean cities for a second day on Friday after unrest that has led to 275 arrests and injured 28 policemen.
Witnesses said bus and taxi services remained on strike after fuel prices soared on Thursday following President Lenin Moreno’s fiscal measures earlier in the week.