Nearly 100 dead in Iraq protests
BAGHDAD: Renewed protests took place under live fire in Iraq’s capital and the country’s south on Saturday as the government struggled to agree a response to days of rallies that have left nearly 100 dead.
The largely spontaneous gatherings of demonstrators - whose demands have evolved since they began on Tuesday from employment and better services to fundamental government change have swelled despite an internet blackout and overtures by the country’s elite.
Hours after a curfew in Baghdad was lifted on Saturday morning, dozens of protesters rallied around the oil ministry in the capital, facing live rounds fired in their direction. Security forces broke up the main protest outside the oil ministry into smaller isolated groups, and conducted house-to-house searches.
Five protesters were killed on Saturday in Baghdad raising the death toll since Tuesday to 99, according to parliament’s human rights commission. Nearly 4,000 people have been wounded since the protests began in Baghdad and spread to cities across the south, it added.
The commission said that most of those who died fell in Baghdad while 250 other people were treated in the capital for sniper wounds.
“We demand clarification from the Iraqi government on those wounded in Baghdad by sniper fire, which is ongoing today,” the commission said.
Thousands also descended Saturday on the governorate buildings in the southern cities of Diwaniyah - where gunfire was unleashed into the air - and in Nasiriyah.
Parliament had been due to meet at 1:00 pm local time but could not reach quorum, after firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s bloc of 54 lawmakers and other factions boycotted the session.
The former militia leader threw his weight behind the demonstrations on Friday with a call for the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi.