IRAQ: SHIA LEADER SADR ORDERS FOLLOWERS TO END PROTESTS, CURFEW LIFTED

Tue 30 August 2022:

Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr told his followers to leave their protests in central Baghdad on Tuesday and apologised to the Iraqi people after nearly two days of violent clashes between rival Shi’ite Muslim groups.

“This is not a revolutionary (anymore) because it has lost its peaceful character,” Sadr said in a televised address. “The spilling of Iraqi blood is forbidden,” he added.

Sadr gave followers “60 minutes” to withdraw from the high-security Green Zone, after which he would threatened to “disavow” those who remained.

“I apologise to the Iraqi people, the only ones affected by the events,” Sadr told reporters from his base in the central Iraqi city of Najaf.

Supporters of Iraq’s powerful cleric Moqtada Sadr started to withdraw from Baghdad’s Green Zone on Tuesday after he urged them to end a protest following violence that killed 23 of them.

Iraqi security forces lifted a nation-wide curfew, the state news agency reported, after powerful Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his supporters to withdraw from the streets.

The unrest began on Monday when al-Sadr announced he would resign from politics and his supporters stormed the Green Zone, once the stronghold of the United States military that is now home to Iraqi government offices and foreign embassies.

His decision to quit politics came after weeks of protests by his supporters in the wake of a political crisis that has left the country without a new government, prime minister or president for months.

Overnight Monday and on Tuesday morning, clashes raged between al-Sadr’s supporters and the army and men of the Hashd al-Shaabi, former Tehran-backed paramilitaries integrated into the Iraqi forces.

On Tuesday morning, medics updated the toll of al-Sadr supporters killed to 30, with some 380 others injured – some with bullet wounds and others suffering from tear gas inhalation.

A mass funeral was held on Tuesday in Najaf, a Shia holy city, for some of the protesters killed in Baghdad.

Iraq’s government has been deadlocked since al-Sadr’s party won the largest share of seats in October parliamentary elections but not enough to secure a majority government – unleashing months of infighting between different Shia factions.

Al-Sadr refused to negotiate with his Iran-backed Shia rivals, and his withdrawal on Monday catapulted Iraq into political uncertainty.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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