IRAQ: SHIA LEADER SADR TELLS SUPPORTERS TO WITHDRAW, 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.

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.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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