Thu 03 October 2019:
At least three protesters and one policeman have been killed in Iraq‘s southern city of Nasiriya, according to a monitoring group, after nationwide anti-government protests devolved into violence that saw security forces fire live rounds and tear gas for a second straight day.
The deaths on Wednesday came a day after at least two protesters – one in the capital, Baghdad, and one in Nasiriya – were killed and hundreds of people were wounded in clashes between police and protesters angry at unemployment, corruption and poor public services.
The nationwide rallies are the largest display of public anger against Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s year-old government.
Mustafa Saadoon, director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera three protesters and one policeman were killed in Nasiriya during clashes on Wednesday. At least 78 people were also wounded, he said.
News agencies quoted medical and security sources as saying that the death toll over the past two days stood at nine. The figure could not be independently verified.
Later on Wednesday, authorities deployed counterterrorism troops in Nasiriya after police “lost control” when gun battles erupted between protesters and security forces, police sources told Reuters news agency. Curfews were later imposed in Nasiriya and two other southern cities, Amara and Hilla, they added.
At least two protesters killed and hundreds injured in Iraq after police clashed with anti-government demonstrators rallying against unemployment and corruption. pic.twitter.com/G5Yn3GZT8m
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 2, 2019
Meanwhile, internet blockage observatory NetBlocks said online coverage had been cut off across much of the country, including Baghdad, with connectivity falling below 70 percent.
In the capital, Tahrir Square was sealed off on Wednesday by heavily armed soldiers and dozens of riot policemen, with some demonstrators gathering around the edges. Hundreds of protesters, including university graduates, had rallied there on Tuesday.
Protesters on Wednesday also took to the streets in al-Shaab in north Baghdad and Zafaraniya in the south, with riot police attempting to disperse them with tear gas and live rounds fired in the air.
“I came out today in support of my brothers in Tahrir Square,” Abdallah Walid told AFP news agency in Zafaraniya, where protesters were burning tyres on streets lined with riot police vehicles.
Meanwhile, protesters tried to break into the municipality building in the eastern city of Kut, while hundreds took to the streets of Hilla and Diwaniya, according to Reuters.
Thousands gathered in the oil-rich southern city of Basra in front of the provincial administration building but so far protests there were peaceful.
Peaceful protests were also reported in Samawa, while small rallies were held in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Tikrit, as well as in the eastern province of Diyala, Reuters reported.
In a statement on Tuesday, the prime minister had promised jobs for unemployed graduates and instructed the oil ministry and other government bodies to start including a 50 percent quota for local workers in subsequent contracts with foreign companies.
According to the World Bank, youth unemployment in Iraq is more than 20 percent.
Ali al-Nashmi, a professor of international relations at the Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, described the latest protests as the “most serious we have seen yet”.
The United Nations expressed concern over the violence and urged calm, with the special representative of the UN secretary-general for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, reaffirming in a statement the right to protest.
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