IRAQ DEATH TOLL RISES TO 49 AFTER THOUSANDS ON STREETS

Demonstrators turn their fury on government and paramilitary offices

At least seven more Iraqi protesters were killed yesterday in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and in the southern town of Nasiriyah, as thousands took part in nationwide anti-government protests.

The violence brought the death toll at the protests that restarted on Friday to 49.

Thousands of protesters tried to reach Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to embassies and government offices. Security forces fired tear gas as protesters tried to remove blast walls from a main bridge leading to the government district.

By nightfall, the security forces had chased the protesters back to Tahrir Square, a central roundabout.

Four people were killed when they were struck by tear gas canisters, security and medical officials said.

A few hundred protesters rallied in the capital’s Tahrir Square, where police fired tear gas as they tried to cross Al Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone that houses government buildings and embassies.

“Iraq has a lot money, but it’s people are poor,” said Abbas Yakoud, 19. “The people just sell water and cigarettes. It’s people are dying.”

He carried with him a metal cut-out in the shape of Iraq with rubbish pasted on it. “This represents the current moment,” he said. “We want to completely change the government.”

Mr Yakoud echoed the demands of many of the protesters, many of whom say that despite living in one of the most oil rich countries in the world they are unable to find work and lack basic services.

These protests has been the greatest challenge to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government since he took office in 2018.

In a speech on Thursday on the eve of the protests Mr Abdul Mahdi appealed for calm and warned that chaos would overtake Iraq if the government resigned. He said the security forces would allow protesters the right to express themselves.

Most of the violence has occurred in Iraq’s Southern provinces. Protesters burnt the headquarters of political parties and Iraq’s influential Hashd Al Shaabi, a loose umbrella group of mostly Iran-backed militias.

Security forces announced curfews in Southern provinces in an attempt to curtail dissent, but protests were reported in Diwaniyah, Nasriyah, Babylon and Najaf.

In Baghdad, the protests began with a festival-like atmosphere, with thousands of protesters dancing around speakers hoisted on tuk-tuks.

As night fell the security forces advanced on the protesters in Tahrir Square in Baghdad firing tear gas and sound bombs driving them back to Tayaran Square.

“Why do they aim at us?,” Ali Jabar Hussein, 26, said. “These are peaceful protests, these are the people’s protests. They aim at us in our heads, why? Where are you Abdul Mehdi?”

A parliamentary session scheduled for yesterday afternoon to discuss the renewed protests was cancelled after too few turned up to reach a quorum.

Tensions remained high across several southern cities, with security forces cutting off roads and imposing strict curfews.

More than a quarter of the deaths on Friday occurred in the southern city of Diwaniyah, where protesters set fire to the headquarters of the powerful Badr organisation, part of the Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitary force. Twelve of the protesters died after becoming trapped in the fire.

The Independent High Commission for Human Rights of Iraq said other deaths were caused by gunshots or tear-gas canisters.

Members of Asaeb Ahl Al Haq, another Iran-backed militia, reportedly fired at protesters who marched on its headquarters in Nasiriyah, killing at least nine. Besides Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah, the hometown of Prime Minister

Adel Abdul Mahdi, protester deaths were reported in Samawah, Amara and Basra, the largest city in the south.

Almost 200 people have died and thousands were wounded since anti-government protests broke out in Baghdad and across the country’s Shiite-majority south on October 1. The demonstrations were largely paused ahead of and during a Shiite religious occasion known as Arbaeen, but resumed on a large scale on Friday.

At least 150 demonstrators were killed in the violent suppression of the first round of protests, drawing international condemnation.

The protesters, mostly young male Iraqis, are calling for an end to corruption. One in five Iraqis live below the poverty line and youth unemployment is at 25 per cent, the World Bank has said, despite Iraq being Opec’s second-largest oil producer.

The security forces used the greatest force while blocking protests from making their way into the Green Zone via Jumhuriya bridge. The National saw footage of armed men taking two protesters from the bridge, beating them, putting them into cars and driving away.

“We don’t where they are,” said Mostafa Kemal Aziz, 28, a protester who observed and filmed the arrests from a nearby building. “I saw they attacked them with smoke and sound bomb and they were targeting them heavily. They separated the protesters until the number was small and then began to take the protesters. An armed man had a weapon called a jackhammer that shoots tear gas and sound bombs.”

Mr Aziz said he attended the protests for the future of Iraq. “I see the future generation, I see my children would not have clean water or work. We want the young and old to be able to work.

“These are without leadership. We want a new government, we want a republican system not a parliamentary system. In the Parliament they are only looking out for themselves and their party,” he said.