Iraqi forces shoot at protesters, four killed

Badghdad, Nov. 7: Another 35 people were wounded in the clashes near Shuhada Bridge, they said, as mass demonstrations continued for a 13th straight day with thousands thronging central areas of the capital.

In southern Iraq, dozens of anti-government protesters burnt tyres and blocked the entrance to the port of Umm Qasr, preventing lorries from transporting vital food imports, just hours after operations had resumed, port officials said.

The Iraqi government has failed to find a way out of the biggest and most complicated challenge to its rule in years. The unrest has shattered the relative calm that followed the defeat of the Sunni Muslim extremist Islamic State in 2017.

A crackdown by authorities against mostly unarmed protesters has killed more than 250 people since unrest broke out on Oct. 1 over lack of jobs, services and an infrastructure wrecked by decades of conflict, sanctions and corruption.

Protesters, mostly unemployed youth, blame a political elite that has ruled Iraq since the toppling of dictator Saddam

Hussein in a 2003 US-led invasion, and demand a complete overhaul of the political system.

The country is beginning to feel the fiscal pinch of weeks of the unrest, which started in Baghdad and quickly spread to southern cities.

The new stoppage of operations at Umm Qasr port in the south is likely to compound financial losses a day after the government said that a weeklong halt of operations there had cost more than $6 billion. The government has offered nothing that is likely to satisfy most protesters.