Kurd party offices torched in Baghdad
Protesters carried posters of Qasem Soleimani of Iran
Supporters of Hashed Al Shaabi, an Iraqi paramilitary network dominated by Iran- backed factions, yesterday burned down the main Kurdish party’s headquarters in Baghdad after criticism from a Kurdish ex- minister.
Hundreds of Hashed demonstrators swept past a security detail and stormed into the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party ( KDP), which runs the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, and torched them.
Protesters burned Kurdish flags while others carried posters of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al- Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad last January.
The Hashed paramilitaries were formed in 2014 to fight Daesh. Earlier this month, Hoshyar
Zebari, Iraq’s longtime former foreign minister and a key Kurdish power- broker, said the government needed to “clean up the Green Zone [ in Baghdad] from the presence of Hashed militias”.—