More than a nudge: protests in Baghdad
Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday stormed the city’s Green Zone, a large protected swath of land that includes the USA and other embassies and the Iraq government’s ministries and parliament, to protest Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s inability to overhaul his cabinet and how Iraq’s parliament is selected, which al-Sadr’s forces and al-Abadi blame for contributing to the country’s political corruption.
Followers of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr gather at Grand Festivities Square within the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, May 1, 2016.
That attack targeted Shiite faithful walking to the northern Baghdad shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim, the seventh of 12 imams revered in Shiite Islam.
Abadi “directed the interior minister to pursue the elements who attacked the security forces and citizens and members of parliament and vandalised state properties and to refer them to the judiciary to receive their just punishment”, a statement said.
Earlier on Sunday, two vehicle bombs in the city of Samawah about 230 miles south of the capital killed 31 people.
The Islamic State took responsibility, claiming a militant “blew up his vehicle in the middle of a gathering of the Shiite Ministry of Interior Special Forces” and was followed by a second who “blew up his auto and killed more people”.
At least 52 people were wounded in both explosions, and the police official said the death toll was expected to rise. No group has yet claimed responsibility. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the competing claims.
The Shiite-dominated city is located some 370 kilometers (230 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.
BAGHDAD – Anti-government protesters disbanded at least temporarily Sunday from the heavily fortified Green Zone they had stormed a day earlier after the Islamic State group carried out its second major attack in Iraq in as many days – a pair of vehicle bombs that killed more than 30 people. Jubilant protesters were also seen jumping and dancing on the parliament’s meeting hall tables and chairs and waving Iraqi flags. No one was seriously wounded. On Saturday, lawmakers were pursued and sometimes reportedly assaulted by crowds who took over the parliament chamber, taking selfie photographs in the relatively plush space.
On Saturday, protesters vented their rage, climbing over blast walls to rampage through the parliament building’s main chamber.
Iraqi President Fuad Masum called on protesters to evacuate the building and said politicians needed to implement the new cabinet and fight corruption.
The demonstrators were acting on the orders of Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric responsible for launching a bloody insurgency against USA forces.
A demonstrator named Humam said he was shocked by the contrast between the poverty in which most Iraqis like him live and the comparative luxury inside the central district, which he had never entered before.
Abadi’s struggles began last summer, when protesters took to the streets of Baghdad in the middle of an intense heatwave, angry at the government’s failure to provide basic services and infrastructure to its people 12 years after the U.S. invasion. At least 741 Iraqis were killed and another 1,374 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq during the month, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.
